GC Myers-Still Untitled 2026
The birds are singing in your eyes today
Sweet flowers blossom in your smile
The wind and sun are in the words you say
“Where might your lonesome lover be?”
Birds may be singing in my eyes this day
Sweet flowers blossom when I smile
But my soul is stormy and my heart blows wild
My sweetheart rides a ship on the sea
Though my soul is stormy and my heart blows wild
Where might my lonesome lover be?
–Woody Guthrie lyrics, Wilco/Billy Bragg music
I finished the painting above yesterday. It’s a theme and style that I often revisit, one that pleases me on many levels. Primarily, I enjoy painting these pieces as they are filled with motion and many interactive forms in the sky. They seem simple but they are more complex than one might think. They provide a challenge for my mind as I have to take everything into consideration as I move from form to form, block of color to block of color.
It sounds easier than it actually is. I have started painting a couple of these in recent weeks and after working for several hours on each, found that I had lost the thread and rhythm of the composition. It wasn’t much, probably not discernible to the casual viewer, but enough to take away its sense of rightness, that quality that validates the believability of a piece. That thing that suspends disbelief. I ended up painting over both of those attempts rather than struggle any longer with their flawed sense of rightness.
As I have described here a number of times, it is that sense of rightness that allows the mind– well, my mind, at least– to see a landscape or sky or whatever and believe that it could be as it is. For example, the sky here could not be as it is in nature but in my mind, it feels right. Possible and real.
That, of course, is just my own theory. Nothing scientific, no data to back it up as far as I know. But I don’t care. It works for me.
I wasn’t planning on showing this new painting yet. I like to sit on them for a bit longer to make sure that the feeling I had when painting it remains intact, that the same sense of rightness and emotion remains. But a song came on and I felt it was in the same frequency of this piece.
The song is Ships and Birds. The lyrics are above. It is from the Mermaid Avenue album from which I have shared many tracks over the years. The songs from unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics were put to music created by Wilco along with Billy Bragg. It is a collaboration between artists decades and generations apart. I love this work. It feels like comfort food for my ears and mind.
Ships and Birds is a very short song that feature guest vocalist Natalie Merchant wondering where her sweetheart, who is on a ship at sea, might be. Her heart is filled with the storms and wild winds she imagines her lover is experiencing. Its tone felt right on the mark for this painting. I thought of titling this piece Ships and Birds but, though it makes sense to me, it might actually distract others. But who knows? Maybe that is the right title anyhow…