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Archive for June, 2017

The Sky Doesn’t Pity/ Competition

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, tagged , , , on June 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

I came across this blogpost from four years back and it made me go over and closely examine the painting about which I was writing. It’s one of those things where you walk by it every day and after a bit, you fail to really see it. But looking at it reminded me of how much it bolstered me at the time it took its little prize.

I haven’t entered a painting in a competition for many years now. I never liked the idea of judging one painting against another as though there was some objective scale on which to judge them. Plus the idea of a group of judges trying to get a grasp of your work with 10 seconds exposure to it seemed kind of unfair in some way. Not that I didn’t have successes in the competitions I did enter. I took third place in a national competition and had a couple of Best in Shows along with a couple of other awards in regional events. But it never felt good to me and when I felt like it no longer served my needs I stopped entering them. 

But those competitions did wonders for me early on in my development and I may not be writing this today if not for them. Here’s what I wrote a few years back:

GC Myers-The Sky Doesn't Pity 1995smI was looking around my studio, taking in some of the work hanging on the walls throughout the house.  There are pieces from other artists, including some talented friends and young fans along with some notables such as David Levine and Ogden Pleissner.  But most of it is older work of my own.  There are a few orphans, paintings that showed extensively but never found a home.  In some I see flaws that probably kept someone from taking it home but most just didn’t find that right person with which to connect.  Most of the other hanging work is work that I won’t part with, work that somehow has deeper meaning for me.  Work that just stays close.

One of these paintings is the one shown here, The Sky Doesn’t Pity, a smallish watercolor that’s a little over 4″ square.  It was painted in 1995 after I had started publicly showing my work for the first time at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY, not too far from my home.  The gallery has been what I consider my home gallery for 18 years [22 years now], hosting an annual solo show of my work for the last eleven years.  This year’s show, Islander, ends next Friday.

But when this piece was done I was still new there, still trying to find a voice and a style that I could call my own.  I had sold a few paintings and had received a lot of encouragement from showing the work at the gallery but was still not sure that this would lead anywhere.  I entered this painting in a regional competition at the Gmeiner Art Center in Wellsboro , a lovely rural village in northern Pennsylvania with beautiful Victorian homes and gas lamps running down Main Street.

It was the first competition I had ever entered and, having no expectations, was amazed when I was notified that this piece had taken one of the top prizes.  I believe it was a third but that didn’t matter to me.  Just the fact that the judges had seen something in it, had recognized the life in it, meant so much to me.  It gave me a tremendous sense of validation and confidence in moving ahead.  Just a fantastic boost that opened new avenues of possibility in my mind.

I still get that same sense even when I look at this little piece today, a feeling that would never let me get rid of this little guy.  I can’t tell you how many times I have glimpsed over at this painting and smiled a bit, knowing what it had given me all those years ago.

It encourages me even now.

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Father’s Day 2017

Posted in Uncategorized on June 18, 2017| 4 Comments »

I was going to write about my dad and his current life with dementia but I just didn’t want to do it this morning. One of my own struggles in dealing with his condition is rectifying his current condition with the image that I had of him from my childhood. I thought I’d run a post from back in 2010 that deals with that earlier image.

After the post is this week’s Sunday morning music, Mama Papa Twist from the Crazy Rockers. a Dutch Indorock group from the early 60’s. Indorock was a fusion of western and Indonesian music performed by Indonesian emigres in northern Europe in the 50’s and 60’s. It was pretty hot in its time and some of the bigger groups, like the Tielman Brothers, still perform. This doesn’t have a lot to do with Father’s Day but I get a kick out of it and I think my dad, especially in that earlier incarnation would as well.

Take a look and have yourself a good day.

This is a photo from back in 1963 or 64. We were living in an old farmhouse on Wilawanna Road, outside Elmira, just on the NY side of the border with Pennsylvania. You could walk over the hill behind our house and be in Pennsylvania. It’s a place that played a large part in my formative years.

We had a large chunk of yard to one side of the house that became a ballfield, a place where many of the kids on our road came to play baseball regularly and where Dad would often pitch to us or hit soaring fungoes that we would run under, pretending to be Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle.  Dad is standing near home plate in this photo. That’s my brother, Charlie ( Chuckie back then), in the background.

I love this photo. When I think of images of my father this one is always first in line in my head.  It was a Sunday morning, Easter if I am not mistaken but time has fuzzed that detail a bit.

It show my father at about 30 or so years of age, as strong and powerful as I would ever know him.  I was four or five years old and he was larger than life to me then, could do no wrong.  My protector and my boon companion.  This view of him sums that all up.

The pose has a bit of the pride and arrogance of youth in it, still brimming with the what-if’s and what-can-be’s of potential.  It’s not something you’re used to seeing in your parents and witnessing it is like seeing a secret glimpse of them, a side you know must have been there but remains hidden from you in your day to day life with your parents.  Maybe that’s why I like this picture so much.  It seems like a marking point between his youth and ours, his kids.

I don’t know.  Like many personal things, it’s hard to explain.  All I know is that when I see my Dad today or think about him, the image of this photo is never far from my mind.

happy father’s day…

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Destination Seen

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , , , on June 16, 2017| 2 Comments »

If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

–Henry Miller
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We often search and search, moving from place to place, trying to find that certain something that we can’t quite name. We have it in our minds that it is a physical place, a tangible object, that will satisfy our need to wander.

New people to meet.

New streets to explore.

New landscapes to surround us. New hills to climb.

But maybe what we seek is just a new way of seeing ourselves, of a new opportunity to unleash the person we desire ourselves to be. Or, more likely, a chance to see ourselves as we really are, something that becomes obscured in the familiar. Being anchored, as Miller infers above, in the repetition of  day to day life has us showing ourselves always in the same light. We lose touch with aspects of who we are that are never allowed to come to light.

The search allows us that new perspective. While we remain the same we see ourselves from new angles, new vantage points, allowing us to feel new. Different.

Sometimes it is good and sometimes it is not, exposing perspectives on ourselves we would rather not see and may have hidden for a long time. But hopefully unveiling the truth of all that we are will somehow  make us feel comfortable in our wholeness.  Knowing our shortcomings as well as our strengths make us more real, more human.

What we seek is always with us.

You might not view it the same way but that’s what I am seeing in this new painting, an 8″ by 16″ canvas, that I call Destination Seen. It is headed to the West End Gallery for my upcoming show, Self Determination, which opens July 14.

 

 

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Sorrowing Old Man

Posted in Current Events on June 15, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Vincent Van Gogh- Sorrowing Old Man

I wanted to say something about yesterday’s shooting that took place in Alexandria, not too far from the hotel where we regularly stay when we visit the area. I sat here this morning and ran over all kinds of points that ran the spectrum of viewpoints on the event in political and societal terms. But in the end it came down to one point:

I was not shocked nor surprised by what happened in Alexandria.

Nor was I shocked by the overlooked story of the murders yesterday of three UPS workers in San Francisco by a disgruntled employee who was also killed.

Saying that doesn’t please me in any way.

The fact that I feel numb to this and have come to expect violence is dismaying in so many ways. This numbness only deepens the feelings of helplessness that set such events in action in the first place, driving people toward extremism.

It weakens our moral compass, allowing us to accept and normalize things that should horrify us.

It diminishes our humanity to the point that we see such events as only distant events with numbers of casualties.

It increases the distance between us, further fracturing whatever commonality we once held. It makes us try to place blame on those who differ from ourselves– in political persuasion, in ethnicity, race, etc.

We are lessened as a people by every single one of these events.

Yet, forgive me for saying this, I don’t see these tragedies ending anytime soon.

We are an open wound of a nation at the moment. I don’t know that we have anyone currently with the ability to heal this wound, to bring together the people of this country in common cause. Certainly not the person in the White House who has displayed little compassion in his life and shows no signs of embracing all the people of this nation.  His abject greed, selfishness, spitefulness and habitual dishonesty are not traits that will ever serve the greater good.

And it will most likely not be healed in the House or the Senate where party tribalism has won over. Statesmanship is dead and simply doing what is right for the people is no longer the directing principle. It has been replaced by constant short term thinking– the next election, the next campaign event, the next fundraiser. The next large donor. Blind eyes are turned to whatever serves these short term goals, however harmful they may be to the long range health of the nation.

But I don’t want to politicize this. I don’t think there is a political solution to this problem.

Nor a simple answer.

Or even one at all.

Maybe this is like a horrible rollercoaster ride where are strapped in with the tracks leading to a place we really don’t want to go but we can’t get off  because it’s moving way too fast now. So , there is nothing to do but ride it out with hearts bursting and screams in our throats.

As I said, it’s dismaying. The thought and the certainty that there is more violence, more bloodshed ahead is always disheartening.

Maybe this is just venting and serves no purpose. Most likely that’s true. But we can’t just say “oh, well” and move on time after time when these things happen. At some point, it will reach a critical mass and we all have to answer for our willingness to accept the unacceptable for so long.

I dread that day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Kupka/ A Replay+

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , on June 13, 2017| Leave a Comment »

There’s so much to be done lately. Who would have thought that painting could be a hectic occupation? That’s not how they show it in the brochures! Anyway, here’s a post from several years back with the addition of a video showing the work of another artist, Frantisek Kupka,  who slipped unseen through the radar for many people, myself included. The scope of his work and the way in which he maintains such a high level throughout is fascinating. Take a look.

Frantisek Kupka was another one of those supremely talented painters from the late 19th/early 20th century who is little known outside the world of museums these days.  You probably won’t stumble across a Kupka calendar or mousepad.  But when I  see the scope and quality of his work I wonder why he hasn’t made that leap.  I know I hadn’t heard of him when I first came across his work in a book of Symbolist paintings.  I saw this image shown here, Resistance or The Dark Idol, and was immediately struck by the tension and drama in its mysterious setting.  I was surprised when I saw his other work that was beautifully colored and striking in other ways.

Kupka- The Yellow Scale (1907 Self Portrait)

Frantisek Kupka was a Czech painter who was born in 1871 and died in 1957 in France.  His career saw his work move from the early symbolic work to pure abstraction.  In fact, Kupka is considered one of the founding members of  the group, Abstraction-Creation, that set off the abstract movement.  While I found much of his abstract work beautiful, it was the early work that really pulled me in.  It was obvious that he could have worked extraordinarily well in any style he chose.  But his relative anonymity remains a mystery to me.  Perhaps he never had that one  iconic image or series that became associated with his name.  Monet’s water lillies.  Van Gogh’s starry night.  Gauguin’s Tahiti. Whistler’s mom.

I don’t know the whys behind this.  But his talent is no mystery at all.  It is evident in every piece I have come across.

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Here Comes the Judge

Posted in Favorite Things, tagged , , , , , on June 12, 2017| 4 Comments »

Part of the charm of baseball for me are its mythic elements, the stories that captured my imagination as a kid.  For instance, Babe Ruth allegedly pointing to the centerfield fence to call his home run. Or Satchel Paige supposedly throwing strikes using a single gum wrapper laid on home plate as the strike zone.  Willie Mays’ fabled but very real over the shoulder catch. And Jackie Robinson stealing home in the World Series. Too many more to mention here.

This year has brought a player who may enter into that pantheon of mythic baseball lore.  Rookie Aaron Judge of the Yankees combines a physique that seems right out of tall tales with Paul Bunyan size and strength. He’s 6′ 8″ tall and weighs in the 275 pound range, the largest player by sheer body mass to ever play the game. But it is not a lumbering, heavy mass.  He is athletic and quick with a powerful and accurate throwing arm.

But it is his potent bat that has made him the big news of NY and the rest of the major leagues. He leads the American League in home runs, runs batted in, runs, batting average and walks.

All are amazing stats but it is the way in which he strikes his homers that has thrilled the crowds and made his every at bat must see viewing. His pregame batting practices are already legendary with balls flying to the deepest parts of the park where they have scattered bartenders and shattered television screens. The excitement has people coming to the games wearing costume powdered wigs and he even has a section of the stands named in his honor– the Judge’s Chambers.

He hits the ball with incredible power and the crack of the bat is startlingly sharp, with a thunderclap to it unlike almost any other player. His home runs leave the park at ultra high velocity and go ridiculous distances. Yesterday, he hit a ball at Yankee Stadium close to 500 foot that had the other players as well as the announcers in sheer awe.  He is simply hitting balls to places where they have never been hit before, even in batting practice. As Paul O’Neill said, it’s like he’s a big man playing in a Little League field.

I have to say that he has ignited that excitement in the game that I had as a kid where every game, every at bat has the possibility of the amazing or the transcendent taking place. Something that would tie your experience of it to the great myths of the game.

Now, the realistic part of me, that awful adult part, knows that the odds are that someday soon this torrid pace may slow and he will return to the ranks of the merely good ball players. Baseball is a humbling game for players and fans alike. But for know, Aaron Judge is playing the game like he’s in a comic book, like he’s King Kong swinging Thor’s Hammer at the plate. And that makes this middle-aged boy very happy. It’s a great diversion away from these troubling times.

Whenever he comes to the plate, I always think of this song from the 60’s. It was a minor hit in 1968 from Motown’s Shorty Long, who died the following year in a boating accident. I was just a kid at the time, idolizing Cardinal pitcher Bob Gibson, himself a mythic character, but I remember this song well. Can’t go wrong here, Motown soul with the Funk Brothers laying down a great backing track. Courts in session, here come the Judge…

 

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‘Round Midnight

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , on June 11, 2017| 4 Comments »

Quiet morning and I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what I want to play today for this Sunday morning music break. Spent a lot of time listening to a lot of different things. I would say it was too much time spent but it’s been enjoyable just taking the time and focusing on the music rather than having it as a background sound while I work.

And I think there are benefits in just really zoning in on the music without distraction, hearing the edge of the notes and the path of the rhythm. The individual elements become clearer and stronger, something that is often lost when there are a thousand other thoughts and sensations running through the mind. When I’m in the studio sometimes the sounds in the background become a drone that becomes a thread that interweaves with whatever thoughts are guiding the task at hand.

And that’s a shame because I know that I often miss the crucial part of the music in this miasma of thought, the part that inspires, that takes you to another place and time. The transcendent part.

This morning I’ve chosen the jazz standard ‘Round Midnight performed by its composer, the legendary Theloni0us Monk. I’m no jazz aficionado. Can’t tell you a lot about the history of the genre or the importance of different tracks or performances or even who ranks highest among those who do know. But I do know that Thelonious Monk has iconic standing in jazz, as does this song. This is a performance by Monk and his quartet from 1966.

I can only say that I like what I like. It’s my main criteria for judging most everything. Sometimes it goes along with the consensus of the experts and sometimes it just suits my own tastes. Here, I think it’s just plain good stuff that I can listen to with pure focus. Have a listen and hopefully you will have great day afterward.

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Realm of Thought

Posted in Biographical, Current Events, Favorite Things, tagged , on June 9, 2017| 2 Comments »

Sometimes, after reading and listening to the news in the morning, I find myself feeling frustrated, angry, incredulous, despondent and helpless. It’s been that way for the last 20 years but more so in the past year as I see the tribalism of today’s politics take us so far from the ideals of democracy for the people. There’s more and more sheer greed and self-service  without even the pretext of trying to hide it and the basis for legislation seems to be based not on the greater good but on how high a level of spite it can reach.

And the right’s constant kowtowing to the corporate and financial gods makes me feel downright queasy because my years on this planet have taught me that a top down approach– the trickle down effect, if you prefer–is only a pretext for allowing the wealthiest of us to gain more and more wealth with an unenforceable promise that they will freely spread the wealth to a population that has been made dependent to their whims. It is a ridiculous concept as an economic theory and has never shown itself to benefit anyone other than those holding the most wealth.

So , yesterday while the world sat mesmerized while a little more kerosene was thrown on the dumpster fire that is our president, the Republicans in congress voted to repeal most of the banking regulations, Dodd-Frank, that were enacted in the aftermath of the economic meltdown of 2008. It would allow the big banks to resume the activities that led to that crisis, allowing them to make risky bets with the knowledge that the taxpayer’s will be there to pay for their losses.

So, again, this morning I find myself frustrated, angry, incredulous, despondent and helpless.

I decided to walk around my studio and look at some of the things on the wall.  Maybe I could find something there that would placate the feelings, give me a different place in which to put myself. I settled in a corner of my main painting space (shown here on the right) where I have a very large painting of mine with four smaller painting above it. It’s a group of work that means a lot to me in several ways. A couple are early pieces, one is a favorite from my Outlaws series, and the last just seems to settle me down when I am upset.

That would be Realm of Thought, shown at the top. It’s from 2003 and has been hanging with me in my workspace for most of that time. I don’t think it’s necessarily my best work and there’s nothing about that I find remarkable or beyond me, as I have sometimes described. But it has an unusual knack for centering me, focusing my attention on the ethereal  rather than the worldly.

And that makes it special for me.

I definitely needed it this morning. And, as it always has, it gave what I asked from it. It eased that knot that was tied in my guts. It slowed my mind’s racing pace and for a moment I felt myself in the slightly cool yet warm air atop that knoll.

It was good. It was needed.

I have a feeling that I will be revisiting that location much more in the coming months. But at least is there for me.

 

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Preston Dickinson/Replay

Posted in Uncategorized on June 8, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Busy, busy, busy. Here’s a blog entry from a few years back about a somewhat obscure 20th century American painter, Preston Dickinson. I’ve added a video that features his work along with a lovely Chopin score.  I have to admit that I had forgotten his work since writing the post and seeing it again made me appreciate it all over. See for yourself.

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Preston_Dickinson_-_Factory_(c__1920) Columbus Museum of ArtI’m a fan of the Precisionist movement in art which was formed in the early 20th century and often depicted the industrial structures that were fueling the growth spurt taking place in America.  There are some big names in this movement, mainly Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth, both of which I have featured here in the past.  But, like many of the movements in art, there are many lesser  but equally brilliant stars in their universe.  I recently came across one that really hit with me, mainly because of the energy and breadth of his work.  I thought it was all really good, really strong and evocative.  But it moved in many directions, pulling from many inspirations.  There was some Futurist work, some elements of Cubism and others.  It was as though this was an artist that was so talented that he was having trouble finding that single voice that fit his needs.

Preston_Dickinson Old Quarter Quebec 1927 - The Phillips CollectionHis name was Preston Dickinson who was born in NY in 1891.  He studied as a youth at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase and soon after, with backing from a NY art dealer, headed off to Europe to study and exhibit there.  Coming back to America, he moved around a bit but by the late 1920’s was considered among the stars of American Modernist painting.

In 1930, he moved to Spain to live and paint and several months after being there contracted pneumonia and died there.  He was only 39.  He produced only a few hundred pieces of work in the twenty years or so in which he was producing work.

So maybe there is something to this feeling that he was still in the midst of finding his true voice.  It makes me sad to ponder what might have been and what sort of work was lost to the world when he passed away.  He was obviously a huge talent with an active and inquiring mind.

I am glad to have just stumbled across him now and hope that the joy his work brings me somehow moves into my own.

Preston Dickinson Harlem River MOMA

preston-dickinson-tower-of-gold Preston_Dickinson - Street in Quebec- The Phillips Collection Preston_Dickinson_-_My_House_-_Google_Art_Project Preston_Dickinson - Industry 1923- The Whitney Collection

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On Tyranny:Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, tagged , on June 7, 2017| Leave a Comment »

There’s a little book out there titled On Tyranny:Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,  from Yale history professor Timothy Snyder that I believe is a must-read for anyone interested in the current affairs taking place in our country as well as abroad.

It’s an easy, brief read ( it’s a small book that is just a little over a hundred pages long) that gets to the point with twenty short essays that outlines the tendencies of authoritarian regimes from the 20th century, focusing on the Nazi and Soviet forms, and puts them in a concise framework that enables you to identify the pattern that their actions followed in their respective rises to power. Some of these actions seemed innocent and easily defensible, even normal, at first glance in their time. But when you place them into a larger template, they became ominous omens of the bad times ahead.

For instance, most tyrannical regimes often begin with their own private security forces, paramilitary units, that morph into enforcers and terrorizers for the ruling despot. Think of the SS of the Nazis. My ears pricked recently when I heard a politician in the state of Washington say that he was going to enlist the Oath-Keepers, a right-wing paramilitary group, as a security force for his public appearances. I am a person who seeks out patterns in everything and the way this fit into the pattern of authoritarianism alarmed me immediately.

The book points out these type of things then serves as a guide to standing against these measures when you see them taking place in your own time and place. It serves as a guidebook that one hopes will never have to be used.  But vigilance requires awareness and preparation. Democracy is a system that doesn’t just happen. It is not natural and must be carefully guarded and maintained. It will always be under attack by those who look to usurp the power of the people for their own ends. That, unfortunately, is natural.

I really urge you to obtain this little book. Right now you can currently get it for under $5 on Amazon. It’s the best $5 investment you’ll make today.

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