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Archive for the ‘Biographical’ Category

After “Traveler”

Posted in Biographical, Music, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2014| 2 Comments »

GC Myers-Peerless sm

“Peerless” – Included in the “Traveler ” Show

I am back in the studio this morning  after returning from Friday night’s opening of Traveler at the Principle Gallery.  There is  a sense of relief in the aftermath, a deep exhalation at having mostly completed my obligations for the show.  But there is often a letdown as well,  a combination of having passed the endpoint  you’ve been working towards for months and  natural self-doubts about things you might have done differently in this show.  Fortunately, this show left me with only the mildest of letdowns.  I am already focused on my next projects and as far as doubts, while there may be just a few minor ones, I am sure that I have done all that was in my power for this show and the work in it.

We had a lovely few days in Alexandria, blessed with the best weather we’ve seen in all the years that we have been visiting in early June.  In the past, we have often endured 100° temperatures, torrential rains and excruciating humidity on this weekend.  But this year it was as perfect as the weather could possibly offer with temps in the high 70’s, blue cloudless skies and low humidity .   I am available for other  regional  weather reports, as well!  In short, perfect conditions to wander around the area a bit before the show.

We attended the ceremony  at the World War II Memorial honoring the living veterans on the 70th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion.  It was a beautiful setting there on the Mall, often moving,  and I felt very honored to be able to spend a short time in the near presence of those vets who survived that day of days.  We also were able to see the Andrew Wyeth show at the National Gallery that I wrote of earlier in the week.  It was wonderful to see so much of his work together, to be able to see the constancy and consistency of his personal vision as well as his ability to capture deep emotion within his scenes.

All in all, it was a great stay.  But the highlight was being to see many of the folks that I have met over the years who opted to spend some time at the gallery instead of out in that perfect weather.  I know that if I were in their shoes, it would have taken a lot to get  me there.  But for the many who did turn out and to Michele and her great staff– Clint, Jessica, Pamela and Chris along with guest bartender, Fernando Ascencio– I  extend a simple and grateful Thank You.  I wouldn’t be here right now writing this if not for you all.  And that I will always remember.

Okay, it is Sunday morning and we need to music.  I was thinking something calming while I decompress.  Here’s a classic Vince Guaraldi composition, Cast Your Fate to the Wind.  It has some of those same elements that you might recognize from his iconic work with the Peanuts gang.

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Traveler- A Full Preview

Posted in Biographical, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , on June 3, 2014| 7 Comments »

GC Myers- Find Your Way The  painting shown here on the right is a24″ by 36″ on canvas and is part of  my solo exhibit which opens Friday at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.  It’s title is Find Your Way which fits neatly in with the show’s title, Traveler.  As concepts, both this painting and this show have to do with moving forward and discovering new territories within, becoming more than you were when the journey began.  Continuous seeking, sometimes plodding along, all to find that internal sense of comfort and belonging that some might refer to as home.  That place where your external reality one day matches your internal reality.

I’m not sure that was my goal when I began painting just a little over twenty years ago.  I knew that I needed to travel from that place inside where I had been dwelling and color and form became a vehicle for me, one that would carry me emotionally to new horizons and vistas, closer to that place where I might feel comfortably at home, inside and out.

And it has.

I am closer to home but it’s a journey that will most likely not end until my final day.  And that’s okay because I have come to appreciate the lessons of the trek and the sight of the new horizon coming into view, knowing that I am further along than I was it all began.

A big part of my journey has been my affiliation with a few galleries, all with which I have had long relationships, who have allowed me to continually keep searching  for that place that I don’t even know.  I began with the Principle Gallery in early 1997 and had my first solo show there in 2000.  It is where the Red Tree was born and this year marks fifteen years that they have allowed me to chronicle my internal travels in a show there each year.  It has been my great pleasure to have stumbled into such a wonderful place with such warm and real people, a place that makes me feel closer to home during this journey.

There’s a full preview of the show below that I quickly put together.  I hope it gives you that sense of the continuity of effort and purpose from image to image that I see.

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Casey At The Bat- Both Sides of the Story

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 1, 2014| 2 Comments »

Baseball The First 100 Years Album CoverBaseball season has snuck upon us again and it remains one of my favorite times of the year.  I had my first taste yesterday, watching the Mets squander a lead then lose in extra innings to the Washington Nationals as I worked in the studio.  It felt pretty good. I have written many times over the years here about my affection for the game and how its history and its folklore is woven into the mesh of our country.

One of my favorite things to listen to when I was a kid was an album called Baseball: The First 100 Years .  It was from 1969, the year that marked professional baseball’s first century, and I can’t remember if I got it in Cooperstown or at Shea Stadium.  But I would play it over and over, listening to the calls of the great plays and great games of the past.  Willie Mays’ over the shoulder catch.  Bobby Thompson’s epic 1951 home run that ended with perhaps the most famous sound clip in baseball history– The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! 

Mighty Casey Has Struck OutIt had Abbott & Costello with their classic bit Who’s On First?, which still makes me laugh even though I’ve heard it a thousand times.  There were songs about Joltin’ Joe and Say Hey Willie and  the classic Take Me out to the Ballpark. And, of course, there was a recitation of Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s poem Casey At The Bat.

I’ve heard many versions of Casey At The Bat over the years.  Some are goofy, some are dead serious and some are emotionally overwrought, especially some of the earliest ones that featured stage actors who exaggerated every feeling and syllable in the poem.  They are all good fun but I prefer a more straight approach.  Today I am featuring a version with the wondrous voice of James Earl Jones followed by a version from another wonderful voice, Garrison Keillor, giving the other side of the story, speaking in a strong Bostonian accent.  Casey was obviously a Yankee in this version.  It’s pretty funny and sends me into the season with a smile.  Hope it does the same for you.


 

 

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Early Reductive Work

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, Technique/History, tagged , , , , , , , on March 15, 2014| 1 Comment »

GC Myers 1994 Early ReductiveWork6I have been spending a lot of time here in the studio in the last few weeks painting in a more traditional manner, what I call an additive style meaning that layers of paint are continually added , normally building from dark to light.  I’ve painted this way for many years but much of my work is painted in a much different manner where a lot of very wet paint is applied to a flat surface.  I then take off much of this paint, revealing the lightness of he underlying surface.  That’s a very simplified version of the process, one that has evolved and refined over the years,  that I, of course, refer to as being reductive.

When you’re self-taught, you can call things whatever you please.  I’m thinking of calling my brushes hairsticks from now on.

This reductive process is what continually prodded me ahead early on when I was just learning to express myself visually.  I went back recently and came across a very early group of these pieces, among the very first where I employed this process.  I am still attracted to these pieces, partly because of the nostalgia of seeing those things once again  that opened other doors for me.  But there was also a unity and continuity in the work that I found very appealing.  Each piece, while not very refined or tremendously strong alone, strengthened the group  as a whole.  I would have been hesitant to show most of these alone but together they feel so much more complete and unified.

This has made me look at these pieces in a different light, one where I found new respect for them. I think they are really symbolic of some of  what I consider strengths in my work, this sense of continuum and relativity from piece to piece.  It also brings me back to that early path and makes me consider if I should backtrack and walk that path again, now armed with twenty years of experience.  Something to consider.

GC Myers 1994 Early ReductiveWork 1 GC Myers 1994 Early ReductiveWork 3 GC Myers 1994 Early ReductiveWork 5 GC Myers 1994 Early ReductiveWork 2 GC Myers 1994 Early ReductiveWork 4

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Time & a “Traveller”

Posted in Biographical, tagged , , , on March 8, 2014| 2 Comments »

Steampunk Breathe Pendulum Clock- Erin Keck

Steampunk Breathe Pendulum Clock- Erin Keck

My solo show this year at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, for which I am in the midst of preparations,  is scheduled  for Friday, June 6th.  This show, which I am calling  Traveller,  will be my fifteenth solo show at the Principle, something which sets my mind reeling with all sorts of thoughts.  I  had no idea when that first show, Redtree,  took place back in 2000 that it would continue for so many years.  To be truthful, I had no expectations of any sort.

I just didn’t know then.  Just as I don’t know now.

Thinking of this show makes me wonder at the fact that I am now in my twentieth year as a professional artist.  While I had no real endpoint to which I was aspiring in the beginning, I was nonetheless impatient to get there. The intervening years have taught me a bit about respecting time and patience, about plodding ahead incrementally and setting aside certain anxieties.  Or at least, coming to terms with them so that they don’t paralyze me.

Time is also a great revelator of  who one really is.  You can’t fake who you are through twenty years.  No, you can’t endure twenty years of creating without revealing your own personal truths.

I think my body work over this time is ample display of that.  It is flawed and imperfect. It is rough around the edges at times yet delicate, almost fragile, at other times.   It is sometimes loud when it should be quiet and quiet when it should be loud.  It is confident and bold yet filled with uncertainties and apprehensions.  It tries to be plain-spoken and easily accessible yet not simple or frivolous.

Unapologetically, it is what it is.

I could easily describe myself with all of these.  I am my work and my work is me and together we travel in time.

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The cool timepiece at the top right is from artist Erin Keck of Mechanicsburg, PA.  She does some creative and wonderful steampunk pieces.  Check out her online store  by clicking here.

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Other Cool Birds

Posted in Biographical, Music, Neat Stuff, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2014| 6 Comments »

GC Myers- The Mind Ponders“If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.”

– Coco Chanel

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There is a new website, Other Cool Birds, out there in the inter-tubes that has all forms of artwork– visual, musical, performance and literary–that features a bird as its central theme.  It is a unique labor of love from multi-talented writer Lafayette Wattles, who also maintains an eponymous and entertaining website devoted to his own writings.  There is also a character always hovering around Lafayette named Dave DeGolyer who I first came in contact with a year or two back when he interviewed me for another website.  Lafayette took parts of my interview and has put it to good use as he has graciously selected me to be the first Featured Artist on the Other Cool Birds site, an honor for which I am highly appreciative.

I urge you to visit this site and the Lafayette Wattles site.  Both are entertaining and informative, plus if you are (or aren’t) an artist, writer, photographer, dancer or musician of any sort, Lafayette is always looking for another cool bird to include in his gallery.  Let your wings show!

I’ve gotten accustomed to having some music on Sunday mornings so here’s one of my favorites from the bluegrass kings, Flatt & Scruggs.  I just finished watching the film  Bonnie and Clyde after waking way too early and the strains of their Foggy Mountain Breakdown had me digging for a version of a Bob Dylan song they covered years ago, Down In the Flood.     I probably have a soft spot for Flatt & Scruggs because of their appearances on The Beverly Hillbillies but this is a great version and shows off the versatility and willingness to venture outside their own neighborhood.

Hey, have a great Sunday!

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Steps to Solitude

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on January 29, 2014| 7 Comments »

GC Myers- Steps to Solitude smMaybe I decided to use this image  because it was -8° when I headed out for my stroll through the woods to the studio.  Well, not really a stroll.  More like a hard determined march, trying to cut through the sharp cold as quickly as possible.  But as I glimpsed at the still dark sky,  Venus  was shining brightly just above the treeline, so much so that it caused me stop and just wonder at its brilliance.  To my eye it had a reddish glint that made it seem  like some exotic little gem in the sky.  Beautiful enough to stop me in my frozen tracks.

This brought to mind the upcoming  Little Gems show at the West End Gallery in Corning that opens next Friday,  February 7th.   I am currently prepping a group of paintings for this exhibit of small work which is always one of my favorite shows of my painting year and one that always brings back good memories.  As I have noted here in the past, the Little Gems show in 1995 was the first opportunity I had to show my work in public.

A first step on a then unknown path.

This will be my twentieth Little Gems show, something which would have seemed unfathomable back at that first show.  I don’t paint as many small pieces in recent years, spending more time on larger work, so this is always a great time to revisit the small form.  There is something  wonderful in seeing the colors and forms compressed into a smaller space, something that brings out the gem-like quality in each.  Each element, each mark takes on greater weight in the smaller form.  There’s a different type of concentration, one that is  quicker in its self-editing and one that is definitely more intuitive.  The sizes are such that everything just happens quicker and there is less time to ponder.

And that is often a good thing.   I’ve often said that I’m not smart enough to paint when I have to think about it.   Maybe these small pieces are  proof  of this.

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This piece is called Steps to Solitude and is a compact 3″ by 6″ painting on paper.  It will be at the West End by the end of this week along with several other small pieces.

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Mountains to Climb

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on January 17, 2014| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- Mountains to ClimbJanuary is usually a month of probing for me,  a time of looking for a direction in which to move, work-wise.  Sometimes it’s a struggle and sometimes it comes more easily.  I’ve written recently about a feeling of being on a plateau with my work, one that has been my home for quite some time now and one from which I am beginning to feel  anxious to move above.  This plateau feeling has made this January searching more of a struggle than normal, as though I were a rock climber faced with a sheer cliff before me  and can’t quite make out my next move.  I am just standing there looking for an edge in the rock face to find a hold that will me to pull myself up.

Maybe it’s that analogy that brought about this new piece, Mountains to Climb, a 12″ by 12″ canvas.  It features a swirling sky and a more prominent peak  beyond the foothills that have been a fixture in my typical work,  There’s an alluring quality to tall peaks that can’t be denied.  It is both a question and a challenge that stands between you and the horizon: Do you have the will and the ability to climb higher?

It’s a question that still rings in my ears as I stand before my own personal mountain.  I think I have my answer and I am beginning to see a way upward, a first hold to pull myself up.

We shall see…

 

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The Pebble

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, tagged , on January 10, 2014| 3 Comments »

GC Myers-1993 PieceI was looking through some old work, pieces that came from my earliest forays into painting about twenty years ago when I was just beginning to experiment.  I came across this particular piece and stopped as I always do when I am meandering through the old work and this painting appears before me.  It is one of my earliest efforts,  done in late 1993.  It is rough and doesn’t exactly represent where my work has went in the meantime.  I was hesitant in  showing it here but felt that there was something important in it for me.

This  painting, copied in part from another artist’s watercolor,  was done with old air brush paints on very cheap watercolor paper.  As I said, it’s rough and not a piece for which I hold a lot of pride. Nor is it a piece that shows any level of mastery.   Certainly not a piece that I  want many people to see if they are not already familiar with my work from the decades beyond this.  You seldom want to show something that displays a weakness but sometimes there is something of value that goes beyond the surface.

But for me there is something about this piece that propelled me forward, something that gave me some sort of insight into where I might want to go with this whole thing.  I equate it to walking along and suddenly stumbling for what seems no reason.  You stop and look down to see what made you trip and there is nothing but a tiny pebble.  Insignificant in every way.  Certainly nothing that would make you stop at any other time.  But this time it has somehow caused you to loose your balance.  So you stop and stand there, looking down at this pebble.  In the moment, you  begin to see other things that you had never taken notice of before and the path you had been walking before the pebble waylaid you is forgotten.

And that’s what this painting was and is for me– a pebble.  On it’s own it is very little.  Insignificant in every way.  But for me it that thing that tripped me and made me stop to take  notice of a new path.  There were small inklings– the curves of the landscape and the blocking of the colors, for example– in this this piece that sparked thoughts and further explorations that, in turn, pushed me even more as I went forward.

In a very long chain of mostly fortunate reactions, this was the catalyst.  So while I may not hold this painting in high esteem (nor would I expect anyone  to do so) this old work has real meaning for me.

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Exceptionalism/ Redux

Posted in Biographical, Influences, Motivation, Personal Mythology, tagged , , on December 27, 2013| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Time of Peace smThis season always signals the end of one year and the beginning of the next and generally sets me to thinking about pasts and futures, thinking about their connection and how it affects my life and work.  One way to examine the past is to delve into genealogy, something that I began doing in earnest several years ago and continue on a regular basis, especially at this time of the year.  It has provided a background, a basis for being and a connection with my environment that I often felt was missing as I grew up.

I will talk a little bit about it with family members, trying to pass on my findings, but have gotten so used to glassy-eyed looks of disinterest that I now seldom bring it up in conversation.  Not everyone wants to look back and I can respect that.  For me, however, it has been essential to my own progress forward, providing me with perspective and a sense of being.  I wrote a bit about this several years ago on this blog, documenting a relative’s pitiable existence and how it relates to my work.  I think it says as much about how I define my purpose as an artist as well as anything I have written before or since.

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I woke up much too early this morning.  Deep darkness and quiet but my mind racing.  Oddly enough I found myself thinking of a person I had come across in my explorations in my personal genealogy.  It was a cousin  several generations back, someone who lived in the late 1800′s in rural northern Pennsylvania.  The name was one of those you often come across in genealogy, one with few hints as to the life they led.  Few traces of their existence at all. 

 At the time, it piqued my curiosity for some reason I couldn’t identify.  He was simply a son of  the brother of one of my great-great grandparents.  As I said, you run across these people by the droves in genealogy, people who show up then disappear in the mist of history, many dying at a young age.  But this one had something that made me want to look further.  I could find nothing but a mention in an early census record then nothing.  No family of any sort.  No military service.  No land or property.  No listings in the cemeteries around where he lived.  I searched all the local records available to me and finally came across one lone record.  One mention of this name at the right time in the right place, a decade or so from when I lost sight of them.

It was a census record and this person was now in their late 30′s.  It was one line with no other family members, one of many in a long list that stretched over two pages.  I had seen this before.  Maybe this was a jail or a prison.  I had other family members in my tree who, when the census rolled around, were incarcerated and showed up for those years as prisoners.  So I went to the beginning of the list and there was my answer.

It wasn’t a prison.  Well, not in name.  It was the County Home.  This person was either insane or mentally or physically handicapped and was living out their life in a home when they could or would no longer be cared for by family.  It struck me at the time that this was someone who lived and experienced as we all do and who has probably not been thought of in many, many decades.  If ever.

This all came back to me in a flash as I laid there in the dark this morning.  I began to think of what I do and, as is often the case when I find myself wide awake  in the dark at 3:30 AM, began to question why I do it and what purpose it serves in this world.  Is there any value other than pretty pictures to hang on a wall?  How does my work pertain to someone like my relative who lived and died in obscurity? 

In my work, the red tree is the most prominent symbol used.   I see myself as the red tree when I look at these paintings and see it as a way of calling attention to the simple fact that I exist in this world.  I think that may be what others see as well– a symbol of their own existence and uniqueness in the world. 

If I am a red tree, isn’t everyone a red tree in some way?  Isn’t my distant cousin living in a rural county home, alone and apart from family, a red tree as well?  What was his uniqueness, his exceptionalism?  He had something, I’m sure.  We all do.

And it came to me then, as I laid in the blackness.  Maybe the red tree isn’t about my own uniqueness.  Maybe it was about recognizing the uniqueness of others and seeing ourselves in them, recognizing that we all have special qualities to celebrate.  Maybe that is the real purpose in what I do.  Perhaps this realization that everyone has an exceptionalism that deserves recognition and celebration is the reason that I find it so hard to shake the red tree from my vocabulary of imagery. 

 Don’t we all deserve to be a red tree, in someone’s eyes?

There was more in the spinning gears this morning but I want to leave it at that for now.  It’s 5:30 AM and the day awaits…

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