Redtree Times

Private Song, 2006

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

–Richard Wright, American Hunger (1977)

The other day, we talked about how a book, painting, or other work of art is often a kiss or a hand reaching out from its creator. It is an effort to create a link to others in order to validate the existences of both the creator and the recipient.

Today, we get a passage from Richard Wright equating it to yelling into the dark abyss then waiting for an echo. And that makes sense to me because this act of creating art often feels like that. You put work out into the world and wait to hear an echo from where it has landed. A faint trace of its recognition.

This brings to mind yet another analogy from the past. Creating art is often like tossing a tiny pebble into a large lake. It plunks in then sends out a small wave in all directions with the hope that it will intersect with other waves in the lake. Sometimes it is a wave that glides into nothingness. Other times, it runs into other waves that send it into others and others, becoming more than it seemed when it first plunked into the water.

You just never know what might happen when you bellow into the abyss or toss your pebble into the lake. Or offer your hand or kiss into the darkness.

I wasn’t planning on writing any of this as I first sat down. It was just going to be a typical triad of image, word and music with some sort of loose connection. The theme for today was either darkness or the abyss.

I can’t decide which, if either, fits. You might take in all three and come away with a different take on the theme.

One never knows. That’s the beauty of art.

Here’s the song to complete today’s triad. I played an excellent version of this song from Robert Plant a couple of years back but felt that the original deserved to be heard. Written by Jesse Colin Young, this is him and The Youngbloods performing Darkness, Darkness from 1969.

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White in the Moon— At the Principle Gallery

The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.

–André Malraux, La condition humaine [Man’s Fate] (1933)

I have things to do this morning but still wanted to share a small triad of image, word, and song. I think these chosen three work well together. I’ll leave it to you for your own judgment.

The song is one you might not know. It’s from Odyssey. Though there was also a better-known disco trio from NYC with the same name, this particular Odyssey was a short-lived California based band that recorded on Mo-West Records which was Motown‘s West Coast division in the 1970’s. This song from 1972 is titled Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love. Nice feel and sound.

To bring back a phrase from the era: Can you dig it?

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From Lawrence Durrell Interview, 1960

I came across this snip above from the Durrell Society, a group dedicated to the work of author Lawrence Durrell. I believe it was from a Paris Review interview in 1960 but I couldn’t verify that. That doesn’t really matter, I guess.

There’s a lot to unpack in that brief paragraph. I often equate writing or making music to painting so I often see equivalencies in things written by writers and musicians. For example, where Durrell says that he doesn’t read much of the work of his contemporaries, I understand. I don’t spend a lot of time studying the work of my colleagues nor do I spend much time examining paintings from earlier artists that are considered masterpieces unless they spark something within me. Unless the work reaches out and meshes with me on some personal level, I just don’t want to spend the time on it. It’s much like Durrell stating that he never reads anything that bores him or doesn’t feel was written for him.

And that brings us to the line– Books are like love letters; they are destined for a particular person— that really hooked me. That and: Every book is a kiss.

Substituting the word painting for book, these two statements aptly sum up my feelings on the interaction that often takes place between a piece of art and the viewer. Some paintings reach out to certain people on a very personal level, seeming as though they might be speaking to only to that person in intimate terms.

As though it was painted for them alone.

That you know it and it knows you.

I know that feeling. It might be one of the reasons I ended up as a painter, having felt that feeling– that kiss as Durrell put it– from the work of others.

I wanted others to feel the kiss of my work, to feel that they were known and seen in it.

I have been fortunate to see this bonding occur between my work and the viewer a number of times over the years. It’s something that can’t be predicted. Some pieces that personally feel like a big buss on the lips to me never find another person in which it produces that same effect.

But when it happens, when I see someone experience a deep emotional connection with a painting of mine, it is beyond gratifying. There is a sense of completion, as though a circle is somehow being made whole.

As though someone has received my love letter.

I can’t explain that any more than I can explain why the connection with the viewer happens in the first place or why people love or experience life in the ways they do.

Therein lies the mystery and beauty of art.

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Luna Twist– Soon at the Principle Gallery, Alexandria VA

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

—Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener (1915)

There’s a song that pops up on a regular basis on a Pandora channel that I often have on when I write for the blog each morning. It’s infectious sound always makes me stop and look to see what and who it is.

It’s a song called Lillies of the Vallery from Japanese composer Jun Miyake. It was used in the 2011 film, Pina, from German filmmaker Wim Wenders, best known for his Wings of Desire and Buena Vista Social Club. Miyake has worked with Wenders on a number of his films. The film Pina is a documentary about the life and work of dancer/choreographer Pina Bausch.

I thought it would be a good song for this week’s Sunday Morning Music since I also wanted to show the new smaller painting at the top that will be accompanying me, along with a small group of new work, to the Principle Gallery for my Gallery Talk there on Saturday, September 30.

The painting, a 9″ by 12″ canvas, is called Luna Twist. It’s a piece that has attracted my attention quite a bit in the past few weeks. Maybe it’s the attraction of the twisting dancer to the moon set against the vast space that separates them. Or maybe it’s the dancer’s relationship to the Red Tree in the distance, whose stance seems to be mirrored in the dancer. Or maybe it is the mirroring between the moon and the lit area on which the dancer twists that attracts me?

Or maybe it is my own desire to dance freely set against the awkwardness and self-consciousness that keeps me from doing so?

I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter. Maybe we try too hard sometimes to know the reason behind our attraction to certain things rather than just savoring our pleasure in them. Perhaps we over analyze things and don’t just revel in the moment.

Maybe that is what this piece about.

Have to think about that.

Hmm, that seems the opposite of what I should be doing based on what I just wrote, doesn’t it? So, for right now, I am going to savor what I feel in this painting and the music.

Here’s the clip from Wim Wenders’ Pina featuring Lillies of the Valley from Jun Miyake.

Now get out of here– gotta dance…

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On the Rise– You Could Win This Painting!

I will be giving a Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria two weeks from today, Saturday, September 30, beginning at 1 PM. I had done a Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery annually up until the pandemic. This will be the first since 2019.

For those who have attended in the past, you will recall that a highlight of these talks was the drawing where one attendee would be awarded one of my paintings that I had chosen for the occasion.

Well, nothing has changed.

There will be a drawing once again, along with some other surprises. The main prize this year is the painting above, titled On the Rise. It is 12″ by 36″ on canvas and will be given away to someone in attendance at the end of the Talk.

The Gallery Talk begins at 1 PM. Plan on getting there a little early to register for the drawing and to secure a seat and maybe chat for a few minutes.

Hope you can make it to the Gallery Talk!

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Stranger (In a Strange Land) -GC Myers, 2002

He was different; innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody wanted, this castaway, that, like a man transplanted into another planet, was separated by an immense space from his past and by an immense ignorance from his future.

― Joseph Conrad, Amy Foster, 1901

I have been writing recently about some of the orphans, those paintings that make the rounds of the galleries and finally come back to me. The piece above is one of these orphans but it really isn’t. It’s mine alone, one of the rare pieces that I don’t think I would ever give up. Like many parents when looking at their children, I see much of myself in this painting.

Over the years I have periodically written about a group of paintings that were considered my Dark Work that were painted in the year or so after 9/11. The piece shown above is one of these paintings, painted sometime in early 2002. I very seldom consider a painting being for myself only but this one has always felt, from the very minute it was completed, as though it should stay with me.

It is titled Stranger (In a Strange Land) which is derived from the title of Robert Heinlein’s famous sci-fi novel which in turn was derived from the words of Moses in Exodus 2:22:

And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

The landscape in this piece has an eerie, alien feel to it under that ominous sky. When I look at it I am instantly reminded of the feeling of that sense of not belonging that I have often felt throughout my life, as though I was that stranger in that strange land. The rolling field rows in the foreground remind me just a bit of the Levite cloth that adorned Moses when he was discovered in the Nile as an infant, a symbol of origin and heritage that acts as a comforting element here, almost like a swaddling blanket for the stranger as he views the landscape before him.

I have often felt like the stranger in most places and situations so I found the words of Moses interesting. Maybe it’s that the name Gershom is derived from the Hebrew words ger which means stranger or temporary resident which sounds the same as the shortened version of my name that my family often used for me growing up. Coupled with sham, which means there, Gershom means a stranger there. It is defined now as either exile or sojourner.

As I said, it is one of those rare pieces that I feel is for me alone, that has only personal meaning, even though I am sure there are others who will recognize that same feeling in this. For me, this painting symbolizes so much that feeling of alienation that I have experienced for much of my life, that same feeling from which my other more optimistic and hopeful work sprung as a reaction to it. Perhaps this is where I saw myself as being and the more hopeful work was where I aspired to be.

Anyway, that’s enough for my five-cent psychology lesson for today.  In short, this is a piece that I see as elemental to who I am and where I am going. This one stays put.

Here’s a little of the great (and I think underappreciated) Leon Russell from way back in 1971 singing, appropriately, Stranger in a Stranger Land…

This is a reworked version of a post that has ran several times here over the years.

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Hogback Heaven, 1994

If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you’d find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies.

–Dave Barry, Turning 40

Things to do this morning but thought I’d replay an old post that first ran back in 2011. One note: The Hogback in the title refers to a road that usually runs along the ridge of a hill or mountain. We have one locally and I have found that it is one of those road names that appear all over. Well, al least, where there are hills.   And yes, I have known all the words to the Beverly Hillbillies’ theme song nearly all my life. It’s one of those things that crowds out the much more useful info that should occupy my brain.

Looking through some old work, most of which was done early on while I was still forming my technique and style and before I showed my work publicly, I came across this oddity that I noted as Hogback Heaven. It’s a goofy little scene of a roughhewn home and hardscrabble yard somewhere out on a dirt road in the country, the kind of place that I often passed years ago in my treks on the backroads around my home area. All that is missing here from my memories of those places are a couple of barking hounds and a toddler in a sagging diaper playing in the gravel of the driveway. Maybe a goat, as well.

Whenever I come across this piece, I have to smile. I don’t know if it’s the subject or the crazy electric feel of the cobalt blue sky and hills and the red neon outlines of the house and ground. I’m still trying to figure out where that color came from. Maybe it’s a smile of embarrassment that this little painting is hovering in my past. But there’s something in it that makes me want to keep it around.

I wanted to set this post to some fitting music and in my search came across this other sort of oddity. Called Yiddish Hillbillies, it’s a vintage 40’s era cartoon that has had the soundtrack replaced ( in a very clever and coordinated way) with a song from Mickey Katz.  Katz was a comedian who specialized in Jewish humor, with Yiddish-tinged song parodies of contemporary songs of the time being his specialty. Think Borscht Riders in the Sky or Sixteen Tons (of Latkes). While much of the Yiddish-tinged wording goes over my head I do enjoy the klezmer feel here. A note on Mickey Katz: His son is actor Joel Grey which makes him the grandfather of actress Jennifer Grey.

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Work-In-Progress, GC Myers 2017-2018

Sometimes, stepping away and letting a piece rest allows for music to evolve. When returning, one must not only adapt to the music’s maturity but also one’s own…

–Hélène Grimaud

I came across the tweet below from classical pianist Hélène Grimaud that contains the quote above but a short video in which she speaks about taking on a new piece of music and how sometimes stepping away from it for a while allows for its growth within the artist. Very interesting.

Though we work in different mediums, her words really struck close to home for me. I have found that sometimes a new painting will reach a point, far from its completion, where it takes on an air of inevitability, where its destination feels set in my mind. All the choices feel as though they have been made and all that remains is just putting these decisions down on the surface. Completing these pieces is not as satisfying as the excitement portion of the process which is so vital to me takes place early on in these paintings.

It’s like reading a book to the end when you know exactly what will take place on every page.

It doesn’t happen all the time. Most pieces offer challenges and excitement to the very moment they take on a life of their own. But it is not an unusual occurrence.

But sometimes a piece like that will strike me in a certain way that has me questioning that preordained feeling. There is something in it that is begging for more from me. I don’t know exactly what it might be at that moment but it feels wrong to push through to completion then. Maybe I have been too rigid in what I was seeing for this particular piece and it wants to be something other than that. Maybe I need to grow more myself before moving on with it.

In these cases, these pieces are set aside and I then return to them periodically, to study them for a few minutes to see if there is any movement in my thought process for them. Sometimes it takes only a few days or weeks, sometimes months or years.

I tell a story about a canvas whose semi-sculptural gessoed surface felt so perfect and visually exciting to me that I set it aside in the studio for 6 or 7 months. I knew that I had to grow into it, to have an evolved perception of it, before taking it on.

Another example is the piece at the top of this page. It has been in the studio for 5 or 6 years in the state in which it is shown. I liked it very much at the top it was done but it felt like it needed more time, that to just forge ahead with the inevitability that I saw in it then would create a lesser version of what it could ultimately be. I just didn’t feel that I was ready to finish yet.

Once again, I needed to grow into it.

There are a number of such set-aside pieces in the studio like this. Some will reach their potential. Some will not. This piece has been gnawing at me in recent weeks to be finished, that I am finally ready for it. We shall see where it goes from here.

There are also some pieces that are set aside because they didn’t feel as though they were worthy or strong enough, that they had something missing in the way they were progressing. Quite often, time shows me that I was just not seeing them in the proper way. My perception of them evolves and they become something quite different than I had saw at first. That is very satisfying to see the apparent growth in these pieces as well as in myself.

You can click on the arrow below to watch the film clip of Hélène Grimaud without going to Twitter or X or whatever the hell they call it now.

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Student and Master— At West End Gallery

One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don’t leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.

― Osho, Indian Mystic (1931-1990)

I’ve always said that one of the hardest things about pursuing a career in art is that there is no professional path or training that guarantees the artist that their work will find an audience.

You can try to travel the career path of other artists that came before you but it will inevitably end in disappointment. Every artist’s path is very different, with completely different influences, tastes, people, places, and circumstances.

Every artist walks their own path, much as Osho points out above in reference to those who seek enlightenment. And maybe the artist’s path is just that– a path to enlightenment.

I think the painting shown here, Student and Master, represents this idea well. You may begin by following a well-trod path but sooner or later, if you desire to be more than a traveler on someone else’s path, you have to go off that path and make one that is your own.

One that goes where no other have gone.

One that others may someday try to follow only to realize that the footprints on this path will soon fade.

This lack of a path to follow creates an uncertainty that can be daunting at first. There is no roadmap and few rules to follow. And there are even fewer markers along the way to tell you if you have went the right or wrong way on your path.

But though these things might seem like negatives, they are also the strength of choosing to go your own way. You are free to move in any direction in any way you wish. You don’t have to follow any rules but those that you make for yourself. Perhaps no rules at all. You can push yourself as far as you wish on your path. Nobody can tell you when your journey is over.

Realize however that this may not guarantee one success in the traditional sense. People may not necessarily love, understand, or accept what you do. Your path might well be lonely and filled with hardship at times.

That is a small price to pay to travel the path to authenticity. That is what is at the end of the path of one’s own making. Ultimately, that is the destination every artist seeks.

And you can’t find that on someone else’s path.

Here’s a song in the same vein, sort of. It’s a version of the great Mamas and the Papas hit, Go Where You Want To Go. It’s a performance from a few years back from Jakob Dylan and Jade for a tribute album, Echo in the Canyon, celebrating the music of L.A.’s Laurel Canyon in the 1960’s which consisted of artists like Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds.

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Before…— Painted September 10, 2001

Today is the 22nd year since the 9/11 Attacks. I wasn’t in NYC that day and had no friends or family at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon so I can’t write on the experience or emotions of those who were there or those who lost family and friends that day. Those folks whose lives were forever altered.

However, the many millions of us who witnessed the tragedy of that day from afar on our television screens had our lives changed as well. The world shifted a bit that day for everyone. We all saw our lives move on a slightly different path than the one we had been following before that day.

On September 11, 2011, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I wrote about how it had changed my life at the time. I had given my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery the day before and the subject of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 somehow was raised. Someone asked if that day had changed things for me, if it had altered my work in any way.

The Post below somewhat sums up my answer that day. It tells about my feeling on the day before 9/11, on September 10, 2001.

From September 11, 2011:

I could talk much more about yesterday’s talk and how much I appreciate those who attended but I guess I should at least weigh in on the obvious part of this date. It is, of course, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I’m sure there’s not a soul out there who hasn’t been made to remember this fact by the almost constant coverage by the media over the last several days.

In yesterday’s talk, I tried to avoid mentioning this, wanting to provide some sort of diversion, but somehow ended up talking about it anyway. I think it came about when I was trying to explain how much the support and energy that I received from these folks over the years had transformed my life. It reminded me very much of a feeling I felt on September 10th in 2001, the day before the attack.

September 10 that year was a spectacular late summer day with hints of autumn in the air, a pure blue sky and a sun that was softly warm but not harsh. Idyllically quiet and purely pleasant. I remember walking around my pond that day under that sky.  I was at the point in my year when I was done with shows that I was going to do for the year. My solo shows from both 2000 and 2001 had been wildly successful, far beyond what I ever imagined, let alone expected. On that day, that September 10th, I finally had a bit of time to relax and really think about this as I strolled around the pond.

I thought about how different my life was then, in 2001, than it had been ten years before. In 1991 I was a lost and miserable soul, living a purposeless life with little prospect of doing much with it. I was supremely unhappy and saw myself only as a failure.

But circumstances changed in the next few years. After a breakdown, a rebirth, and a serious accident, art unexpectedly entered my life. And with it, everything was suddenly and dramatically different. In painting, I found a form of expression that meshed with my thinking and emotions, giving them a sense of purpose. I began to clearly see those things that were there in my life that had always been there and were core to my existence but had somehow overlooked as I stumbled around blindly in prior years.

I had found myself as well as a reason for living. As I stopped by the pond with that clear sky above, all of this struck me on that day, that September 10th. I felt myself the most fortunate man in the universe that day. My life felt as complete and satisfying as I could imagine and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of appreciation for my good fortune.

I had trouble believing it was my life I was indeed living.

Of course, within 24 hours that feeling disappeared in the smoke and devastation of the events of that day. It’s taken ten sometimes awful years to somewhat approach that feeling again and yesterday, as I felt the warmth of that group, I talked about this feeling and my appreciation for them for allowing me to somewhat regain that feeling.

I don’t know that I made it totally clear. One doesn’t always speak easily about matters of grace.

The painting at the top was painted on that September 10th of 2001. It very much reflects the fullness and contentment I felt for my life on that day, at that specific point in my life. It is filled with that sense of peace and grace I hinted at above. It came to be titled Before…  

There was a strange twist to this painting. I always number my paintings so that I can more easily record and track them over time. The serial number for that painting was 99-911. I did nothing to make it fit this way, and in fact didn’t even recognize this number’s relationship to the date until sometime later. Just an eerie coincidence.

It is a painting that I deeply regret ever letting go as it marks such a distinct turning point in my life. And though I know for a fact that the folks who now possess it have their own deep feelings for this piece, they will never know how much it still lives with me, how much it reminds me that day, that September 10th when life seemed as good it could be and how rare and fleeting that moment can be.

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