When: TODAY–SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, Beginning at 1 PM
Why: It’s FREE and OPEN TO ALL, FUN, INFORMATIVE, with GIVEAWAYS and a FREE DRAWING forthe painting below, On the Rise–and maybe even one more!
AND MUCH MORE!!
On the Rise– You Could Win This Painting Today!
On the road this morning enroute to the Principle Gallery for today’s Gallery Talk. Have a group of new paintings and goodies to give away so I am looking forward to a good talk.
Actually, I am hoping more for a good conversation. Talk implies it’s me just talking at the audience whereas I am looking for a lively back-and-forth conversation. That is always so much more energy when there is plenty of participation and questions from the group.
Hope to see you there! Here’s an oldie from 1978 that might best describe what I just wrote. Here’s the Bruce Springsteen song Talk to Me from Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.
So, pack up your questions and come on down to the Principle Gallery today.
Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength.
–Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
I am a little busy this morning getting prepared for tomorrow’s Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery. Besides framing up the last few new pieces that I will be bringing along, part of the process involves trying to clear my head a bit and organize my thoughts for the Talk itself. That can sometimes the most difficult task to achieve.
One of the new paintings, The Enlightenment, 10″ by 25″on canvas, is shown above. I am going to use it today as inspiration for clearing my mind. It seems to have that sort of clarifying power. It’s clarity immediately pulls me in and allows me to feel a bit more centered. Less scattered.
And I have an inkling that this might be a good thing.
Hope you can make it to tomorrow’s Gallery Talk. I have new work to show, things to talk about, goodies to give away, and answers to all your questions. Maybe not the right answers but answers, nonetheless. And no math questions, please.
So, pack up yourself along with your questions and comments and make your way to the Gallery Talk tomorrow. It promises to be a good time and might even be enlightening…
On that note, let’s finish off today’s triad with the theme of enlightenment with a song with just that title. Here’s Enlightenment from Van Morrison.
TOMORROW!!
What: GALLERY TALK
Who: With GC MYERS
Where: PRINCIPLE GALLERY, Alexandria VA
When: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, Beginning at 1 PM
Why: It’s FREE and OPEN TO ALL, FUN, informative, and there will be a FREE DRAWING for thepainting below, On the Rise–and maybe even one more!
Moon, Stone, Moment— At Principle Gallery Saturday
The light we know in the skies above is all that remains of immensely distant fiery stars, many of which no longer exist. They have long since burned to nothingness.
Their light is all that remains. And even that is fleeting.
Soon, history is all that remains of light.
I think there’s a point in there somewhere, but I am not exactly sure where this will go.
I started writing this with the thought that all light is a byproduct of destruction and that we are ourselves are a byproduct of light, dependent as we are on it for producing food and energy.
By extension, we are all products of some distant destruction.
Something burnt so that we might be.
And maybe that is the point I am trying to make– that in order to produce light you have to be willing to sacrifice something. You have to be willing to burn, in some way, a part of yourself to nothingness.
That reminds me of a line from the novel Demian from Hermann Hesse, one that resonated with me at a crucial point in my life: Whoever wants to be born, must first destroy a world.
The question is: What are you willing to burn in order to create your own light?
That sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Not sure if it is, however. The burning is a symbolic form of transformation and is, for most, often not so dramatic in nature.
Even so, the change or transformation we seek– the light– requires some form of sacrifice.
I somehow see this in the new painting at the top, Moon, Stone, Moment. I think we have the choice to transform ourselves and the Red Tree represents that here. The stones in the foreground are static, not able or willing to transform themselves. Not that they won’t do so at some point. It will just take a greater force to create the destruction needed for them to produce the light they possess.
Phew! Not sure if this makes any sense but that doesn’t really matter. Many of my early morning thoughts here are half-baked at best and many won’t make it to the bakery shelves.
Not sure if this recipe works yet. Going to leave it in the oven for a bit.
Maybe I’ll have it worked out for the Gallery Talk on Saturday. We’ll see…
REMINDER/ TWO MORE DAYS!
What: GALLERY TALK
Who: With GC MYERS
Where: PRINCIPLE GALLERY, Alexandria VA
When: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, Beginning at 1 PM
Why: It’s FREE and OPEN TO ALL, FUN, informative, and there will be a FREE DRAWING for the painting below, On the Rise–and maybe even one more!
Unto the Breach— Coming to Principle Gallery, Alexandria VA
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
–William Shakespeare, Henry V
I took the title for this new painting from the famous lines from Shakespeare that has Henry V trying to fire up his troops as they head into battle. He tells them that being polite and civil is a wonderful trait in a man until the specter of war appears. Then it is time to set aside all civility and unleash their passion and rage.
Now, to be clear, I don’t see this painting as being as being about war in any way. No, for me it is more about embracing that same passion of which Henry speaks and setting it upon those things that give your life meaning and purpose.
Some of us at various times sense that something important is missing in our lives, something that gives it meaning and purpose. There is an emptiness or void.
A breach, if you will.
I see in this painting that once you find that singular things that might fill this breach in your life, take to it with all the passion and energy you can muster. Total commitment. Go all in and leave nothing behind.
As the proverb goes: Fortune favors the bold.
And this is certainly about that.
Here’s a song to go with it from Cat Stevens. It’s If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out. and it is about the endless possibilities open to us if we just take the leap into the breach. Longtime favorite of mine.
REMINDER/ IN THREE DAYS!
What: GALLERY TALK
Who: With GC MYERS
Where: PRINCIPLE GALLERY, Alexandria VA
When: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, Beginning at 1 PM
Why: It’s FREE and OPEN TO ALL, FUN, informative, and there will be a FREE DRAWING for the painting below, On the Rise–and maybe even one more!
Nature’s music is never over; her silences are pauses, not conclusions.
–Mary Webb, Gone to Earth
Busy getting ready for Saturday’s Gallery Talk (details below) at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria. The painting shown here is included in a group of new work that I will delivering to the gallery on that day.
To my eye, there is a sense of stillness in this piece in this 20″ by 10″ canvas which inspired its title, In the Moon’s Pause. I could go on about color harmonies and compositional triangles and so on but just the fact that it has a calming effect for myself overrules all of that.
It allows me to easily and seamlessly step into its quietude without asking why it is so. All I can ask of it.
Sometimes, you have to simply accept the feeling and set aside the analysis. One of those cases when the what is more important than the why.
Here’s a musical selection that I feel goes well with this painting. It’s the 3rd Movementfrom Symphony No. 1 from Gustav Mahler. This is a performance from the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.
REMINDER
What: GALLERY TALK
Who: With GC MYERS
Where: PRINCIPLE GALLERY, Alexandria VA
When: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, Beginning at 1 PM
Why: It’s free and open to all, fun, informative, and there will be a free drawing for the painting below, On the Rise–and maybe even another one!
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.
—Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
I have a lot to do this morning as I prep some work that will be coming with me for my Gallery Talk on Saturday down in Alexandria at the Principle Gallery. In addition to framing and all the other tasks that go along with it, I am also trying to mentally prepare for the talk itself.
I go over the possibilities of how it could go, different paths I could follow as far as theme and tone. Anything that will keep me from standing up there like a wooden statue, unable to reach out and connect with the audience in any way.
Maybe the theme will focus on that feeling of being the Stranger who is forever trying to find home, that place where they belong. That is the theme for the blog today as well as for the new small painting at the top, Comes a Stranger. This 8″ by 8″ canvas is included in the group I will be bringing.
Though I have no idea if it will happen, using the Stranger as a theme makes sense in some ways. It’s something on which I can speak easily, having often felt the part. It also plays an important element in my work as I sometimes see my created landscapes as being the homeland I seek as the Stranger.
But that’s just one possibility out of many. The folks who are sitting there will have a major influence on what the talk consists of and where it goes. I won’t know with any degree of certainty until Saturday, right around 1 PM. Then all bets are off.
Here’s a song to complete the triad for today’s theme. It’s a very good cover of the old Kinks song, Strangers, from the Black Pumas. Good stuff.
REMINDER
What: GALLERY TALK
Who: With GC MYERS
Where: PRINCIPLE GALLERY, Alexandria VA
When: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, Beginning at 1 PM
Why: It’s free and open to all, fun, informative, and there will be a free drawing for the painting below, On the Rise–and maybe even another one!
The new painting, Hope’s Fire, above is coming with me for this coming Saturday’s Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery. It’s a smaller piece, coming in at 9″ by 12″ on canvas.
The title came from the contrast of the Red Tree set against the somewhat washed-out blues and greens around it. The paleness of the background immediately felt to me to be symbolic of a fading of hope for the future. The kind that becomes ingrained and normalized after years of struggle, causing people to lose their enthusiasm and become less involved in shaping their own future. The passion to resist and persist wanes.
The fire within goes low.
The disinterested then becomes overcautious, trying to preserve what one has with as little struggle as possible. But as conservationist Aldo Leopold so aptly points out, prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind.
Changing the future is an act of passion and desire, achieved by those willing to stand up and risk failing.
That is all rhetorical on paper. Hard to transfer the idea of passion and fire to reality. But I personally hold out optimism in the current generation of youths that I see taking a larger politically active stance. They see that the future is where they will live and that they should have a larger part in how it will be shaped. They shouldn’t leave it to the older generations who have plundered the past and forsaken the future.
I’ve held this hope for decades that the youth of the world would finally see the future as theirs to form and make their voices heard at the voting booth. My boomer generation never fully reached the promise they once held in this manner nor did the following generations.
We never burned fully. always fizzling out before we forged the future we wanted.
But his new one seems to better understand what is at stake, that they have real political leverage to exert. That their power of the vote can yet overcome the power of extreme wealth. That is, no doubt, why one party is working so hard to disenfranchise their vote.
I see in this new generation a kindled and building fire. It’s the hope I see in the Red Tree in this painting.
I hope I am right and that they can make their fire reach its promise.
Here’s a song in that vein for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. It’s the song from the New Radicals that made them a one-hit wonder in the late 1990’s, You Get What You Give. The band disbanded after one album but reunited to perform this song for the Biden Inauguration in 2021 after they found out that the song was a favorite with the Bidens while they were going through son Beau Biden’s bout with cancer.
Give a good listen and try to kindle your own fire.
And if you can’t do that, fire up someone else. The future depends on it.
REMINDER
What: GALLERY TALK
Who: With GC MYERS
Where: PRINCIPLE GALLERY, Alexandria VA
When: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, Beginning at 1 PM
Why: It’s free, fun, informative, and there will be a free drawing for the painting below, On the Rise.
Fortune’s Smile— Soon at Principle Gallery, Alexandria VA
Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel!
–William Shakespeare, King Lear
It is now just week to the return of my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery after a four year pandemic-related hiatus. It takes place next Saturday, September 30, beginning at 1 PM at the Alexandria gallery.
While I try to make it a good time for the audience by passing on a few bits of information and having a few laughs along the way, I have a nagging suspicion that the bigger attraction for these talks is the drawing that is held at the end for one of my paintings.
And that’s okay. It’s always an exciting and fun moment when good fortune smiles on some lucky person. I only wish I could give away a painting to every person there. Of course, that can’t be done but I do try to make it so that nobody leaves feeling empty-handed.
This year’s painting to be given away is On the Rise, a 12″ by 36″ painting on canvas, shown below.
I also bring a small group of new pieces for the gallery. One new piece is the one shown at the top. I chose to show this blog entry since we are dealing with a theme of good fortune here today. It’ is quite fittingly titled Fortune’s Smile.
Hopefully, Fortune will smile on you if you can make it to the Principle Gallery for the Gallery Talk next Saturday. Hope to see you there. Good luck to you!
On that note, here’s a song from Mary Chapin Carpenter from a few years back. Well, 31 years to be precise. I guess that’s a bit more than a few years but who cares? It’s a fun song called I Feel Lucky with a real early 90’s style video. Enjoy!
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Eye
The painting shown here, Mirrors and Windows, hangs here in the studio and I pass it several times a day–it’s on the way to the bathroom. But even though it’s been in this spot for several years now, it usually draws my attention. It’s been that way, remaining a favorite of mine since it was painted back in 2013.
As I wrote back then:
I found myself looking at this piece quite often in the studio, trying to ascertain what it was that was pulling me in. As I looked, I began to be more aware of the road running through which signified to me our life’s journey. We spend our lives looking in mirrors and out windows, living in reflections and images of ourselves and the outer world.
There must be some perfect balance in this. Somewhere, somehow, we hopefully reach a point where we know who and what we are and turn away from mirrors and begin to look for windows in which we can expand our vision of the outer world and gain greater wisdom.
Years later and it has carried the meaning well that I gleaned from it back then, which is that real art serves as both a window and a mirror, giving the viewer insights and views into the world and reflecting their place within it.
Just this morning, I stood in front of it and wondered if I was looking at it as a mirror or a window.
I came to the conclusion that it might be both.
This entry ran a couple of years ago about this 2013 painting that still is pondered in my studio. Thought I’d rerun it and add a song. This is the Velvet Underground song, I’ll Be Your Mirror, performed in 1972 by Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico.
It was the month of May, the month when the foliage of herbs and trees is most freshly green, when buds ripened and blossoms appear in their fragrance and loveliness. And the month when lovers, subject to the same force which reawakens the plants, feel their hearts open again, recall past trysts and past vows, and moments of tenderness, and yearn for a renewal of the magical awareness which is love.
–Thomas Malory, Le morte d’Arthur
I am in the midst of getting prepped for my Gallery Talk next Saturday, September 30, at the Principle Gallery. This includes prepping some new pieces as well as gathering my thoughts and trying to formulate what I might actually say.
What I am looking for in my planning is a new perspective to give to the audience there. A bit of information that might cause them to see the work in a different way or add depth to how they see it now. Sometimes, it comes down to sharing a personal detail– a recollection or memory or emotional trigger– behind the work.
It can sometimes feel confessional on my part, as though I am sharing something deeply private. I often joke that these talks serve as a form of therapy for me. There’s something to that, in reality. I often feel unburdened after these talks, as though I have gotten some things off my mind.
Those confessional moments often define these talks. It gives them a sense of intimacy and authenticity that extends beyond merely talking about what brush or color I employ on a certain painting.
The thing is, as much as I plan ahead, those moments can’t be planned. They usually come from me talking off the top of my head, which can sometimes feel like walking a highwire without a net. You feel your way forward but there is a constant sense that you could plunge to the depths.
The only safety net here, I guess, is to try to carry a few thoughts into the talk with me that won’t instantly evaporate as I stand in front of an audience. These gathered thoughts end up serving as a jumping off point from which I can then talk off the top of my head and use whatever ability I have to react and respond.
And that is usually when the best moments of these talks occur.
That seems like that was a lot of words to say so little. Let’s end it here by filling out today’s triad. Here’s a recently released demo version of her 1974 hit Help Me from the Joni Mitchell Archives. It is just Joni and her guitar without the backing band, orchestrations, or backup singers. Itis less polished but no less powerful, really showing off her vocal qualities. Good stuff.
REMINDER
What: GALLERY TALK
Who: With GC MYERS
Where: PRINCIPLE GALLERY, Alexandria VA
When: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, Beginning at 1 PM
Why: It’s free, fun, informative, and there will be a free drawing for the painting below, On the Rise.
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
Redtree Times 