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Is It There?

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, Motivation, tagged , , , on December 13, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- First View 1994It’s that time of the year when I get to take a deep breath and begin to look forward into the next year, trying to determine where my path will lead next.  It’s never an easy time doing this, trying to see change of some sort in the work  especially after so many years of being what I am and painting as I do.  It always comes back to the same question: What do I want to see in my paintings?

That seems like a simple question.  I think that any degree of success I may have achieved is due to my ability to do just that,  to paint work that I want to see myself, work that excites me first.  So I have been doing just that for most of my career, painting pictures that I want to see.  But there is another layer to the question.

What am I am not seeing in my work that I would like to see?

That’s a harder question.  How can you quantify that thing that you don’t know, might not even have imagined yet?

It might be a case of  knowing it when you see it.  I know that my first real breakthrough was like that.  I was simply fumbling along , looking for something that nagged at the edge of my mind.   I wasn’t sure what it would look like, had not a concrete idea of what it might be.  It was just there in a gaseous form that I couldn’t quite grasp.  But when the piece emerged in a tangible form– which is the painting at the top here, First View from 1994– I instantly knew what it was that I had stumbled on  and that it was something that  very important to me.

It might not look like much to the casual viewer now but in an instant I could see in this little painting everything I was sensing in that gaseous, intangible form that hovered at the edges of my mind.  I could see a realization of all of the potential in it.  Even now, after years of evolving from it, I can see how it connects to everything in my work, even those things I had could not yet see when I painted it.

And that’s where I find myself at the moment.  There’s something out there ( or in there, I probably should say) that I want to see, might even need to see.  But I don’t know what it is yet.  But I will know it when I see it.

And, trust me,  I do plan on seeing it. 

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Quiescence

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , , on December 4, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- QuiescenceI had a quote on the last post with a quote from artist Jean Arp about man turning his back on silence.  Instead of savoring the quiet, he runs from it, instead distracting himself with all manner of noise.  Anything to keep him from facing the fears that the quiet represents to him.

It’s a theme that has been large in the background of my work.  Early on, when I felt that I wanted to be a writer, I would find myself writing about large open spaces and the caverns of silence that rested in these places.  I called it the Big Quiet.  Of course, it’s a pretty limited subject and there is a certain redundancy in writing about silence and stillness.  I mean, how can you use the noise of words to aptly describe the absence of noise?

So I gave up writing about it and went on with my life, always with an eye out for this Big Quiet.  I don’t know that I was craving it or fearing it at most points.  My life was pretty much filled with the noise of the world, all the snaps and pops of sound and distraction that creep into every living space.  The sounds that I hoped would lessen my anxiety but instead fed it.  I was like so many others who needed the security blanket of sound to protect them from what they might discover if they were forced to face the silence.

But painting gave me a path to finding this Big Quiet.  It was wordless and calm, creating an inner space absent of the sounds of the world  that I was and am still occupying.  It became a destination, an oasis to turn to when the din of world became too loud, too overbearing.  It eased my fears of looking inward and allowed me to savor the quiescence of the brief moments I actually myself there in those scenes of stillness and calm.  It became real and necessary to me.

I don’t know where this going, this wordy noise I’m creating about the stillness I find now.  I just felt that I should add a bit of context to my work, to give a an understanding of what I hope to take from it for myself.  This moment came about from running across the image above, a piece from several years ago that is called, fittingly, Quiescence.  It’s a piece that brings me quiet immediately and seeing it again made me again think of why I paint.

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Happy Plateau.

Posted in Biographical, Music, Painting, Technique/History, Video, tagged , , , , on November 21, 2013| 2 Comments »

Explorer- GC Myers

Explorer- GC Myers

It’s been a busy year.  Actually, it’s been a busy two or three years but the last few months have seemed even more hectic.  There was the preparations for the Kada Gallery show and work being done around the studio by carpenters and masons.  It seemed as though there was little time to really take stock of everything.  But with the Kada show opening this past weekend and my delivering a group of work to the Principle Gallery in Alexandria on Tuesday, yesterday was my first chance to take some time to reflect, to see where I was on my artistic path.

After a short period of examination, it seems to me that I am at a plateau.  Mind you, it’s a happy plateau but I’m not sure this is where I want to stop, not sure that this is my final destination as an artist.  For the past several years, I have been working at what I consider my highest level:  I am painting the paintings that I want to see.  The work is distinctly mine and is consistent in its communicative effect and in the way it satisfies me internally.  The work from my  recent shows have been as personally satisfying as any I have ever  showed.   If I were a miner, I would say that I have been working a rich vein.

But I am increasingly having that nagging feeling that there is an even richer vein for me if I move from this plateau and climb a bit higher.

It’s a scary thought.  This has been, as I said, a happy plateau.  It’s where many artists, upon arriving , settle in for the remainder of their careers.  And why not?  They have worked hard to reach this plateau and are producing the work they set out to produce at the beginning of their journeys.  It would be very easy to stay here and be content and safe, to not have to face the prospect of a new climb with all the perils that come with it:  The uncertainty of what is up there and the possibility of failure.

Maybe I am being over dramatic in my description here.  I don’t know.  I do know that I have that clawing and gnawing feeling in my gut that now is the time to start moving onward and upward, to leave this happy plateau and take on the risk of failure.  Whether I can actually muster enough bravery to make this move, whatever that may be, and where it might take me are only the beginning of the  questions that arise, questions for which only time holds the answers.

We shall see…

Here’s an old song, Unsatisfied,  from The Replacements that fits the bill for this subject.  Look me in the eye and tell me that I’m satisfied…

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Alchemy

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , on November 15, 2013| 3 Comments »

“As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.”

—W.B. Yeats, Rosa Alchemica

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GC Myers--Alchemy My show, Alchemy, opens tomorrow night at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA.  I wrote last month about how the title, Alchemy, came about from my own  wonder at the mystery of the whole idea of how the simple act of smearing some paint on a surface could transform that bit of pigment and paper into something that is filled with emotion and meaning.  And not just for me.  It crossed the boundary of the self and reached out, sometimes communicating in a way that seemed totally beyond me.  The whole thing seemed like alchemy to me, as though there was some mysterious force transmuting these base materials– the paint and paper– into something pure and precious.

This thought has stuck with me for many years.  I often find myself stepping back from my easel or painting table, suddenly confused by the abstract nature of this whole process.  At these moments, the rational part of my mind takes hold for a moment and  questions the very validity of  the world I have created over the past two decades.  My rational self tells me that I am not  educated nor wise,  not brave or special in any way.  How can I, a base material myself, create anything that is more than myself?

But this moment of doubt always passes, pushed aside by my belief in the reality of the world I am seeing before me.  It may only be slashes of paint on a bit of paper or canvas from a simple and ordinary man but it represents something more.  It represents a faith in the human spirit, a belief in the uniqueness of each individual and the belief that we all essentially maintain many of the same  hopes and dreams for our lives– peace and calmness, for example.  It’s a belief that if I am pure and earnest in my attempts to create this world, it makes this work  valid and real, as filled with feeling  and meaning as any work from anyone.

There must be alchemy at play, somewhere in here…

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Encouragement/Redux

Posted in Biographical, Quote, tagged , , on October 25, 2013| 2 Comments »

The Find- smKnowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

— George Santayana

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I was going through the blog archives and came across this blogpost from back in 2009 headlined with this quote from George Santayana.  The words really jumped off at me this morning.  So often it seems that we self-limit ourselves with our fears and anxieties, making tasks and goals that might actually be within our reach seem impossible to accomplish.  As a result we never reach beyond what we can see in our limited vision of the world.

This is just a short remembrance of my earliest aspirations, before any thought of what was possible or impossible had entered my thought process.  To an 8 year old everything is still attainable and, to their credit,  my parents never imposed any limits on my imagination or aspirations.  That was their form of encouragement.

Here is what I wrote back in 2009:

When I give gallery talks, generally there is a part at the beginning where I run through how I came to be a painter. I usually tell how I wanted to paint when I was a small child, maybe 7 or 8 years old, and my parents bought me an oil painting set from the old Cardinal Paint store in Elmira, where they sold art supplies alongside their house paints. 

Of course, I didn’t have the first idea how to use the paints and the canvas panel ended up covered with a smear of a color that could best be described as pukish looking. Discouraged, I moved on to other things. Many other things through the years. 

Now, that might seem, at first blush, like a sad little story but it always touches me. My parents didn’t know how to go about helping me but they did what they could and never discouraged me from whatever avenue I chose to follow. I was never told I couldn’t be this or that I should be that. They didn’t know what was possible and never tried to put limits on my hopes. 

In high school, I harbored dreams of being a writer and for Christmas one year they gave me a Remington Rand office typewriter. It was a reconditioned monster of a machine, must have weighed 75 pounds. I had it for years and when I did finally get rid of it, it was with great sadness. It was one of the best gifts I’d ever been given and was always a symbol of my parents’ encouragement. 

The point of this is that my parents allowed me the freedom to discover what was possible for me in my life. Did they always go about it in the best way or guide me in any way? Probably not but that didn’t seem as important as the freedom they gave me to search for what was possible for me. 

And being able to find what was possible, as the saying above says, is the beginning of happiness…

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The painting at the top is a new piece, The Find, going to the Kada Gallery for the November 16th show.  It is a 16″ by 20″ canvas,

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Stranger in a Strange Land

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Influences, Music, Personal Mythology, Video, tagged , , , , , , , on October 20, 2013| 3 Comments »

GC Myers Stranger (In a Strange Land) -I featured an older piece here on the blog last month, a painting that was considered my Dark Work from around 2002.   The piece shown above is another of these paintings and is one that I have always considered solely mine.  I very seldom consider a painting being for myself only but this one has always felt 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.

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.

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 found myself 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…

 

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Shadowsong

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , on October 15, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Shadowsong smWe are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

–Buddha

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It’s an idea that we all too often forget,  that our thoughts can form who we are.  I know for myself, the thought  that I was an artist was the most crucial step I made in becoming one.  Once I had made that decision that, yes, I was an artist, every decision  after that that contributed to me being an artist came much easier.  This was the road I was going to follow and any action that occurred would take place based on that fact.

But it took a long time to reach that point where I determined that I was indeed an artist.  In fact, for quite some time i was embarrassed to say it  when someone would ask what I did.  It just sounded too presumptuous to state it aloud even though in my mind it had become fact.  So I would say I was painter.  It sounded safer.

But inevitably, the person asking the question would determine that what I meant by painter was that I was a house painter and ask what it would cost to get their living room painted.  I guess I looked more  Sherwin Williams than Salvador Dali.  So I decided that I better just say that I was an artist.  Just less confusion and besides, that is what my mind  had already patterned itself in the shape of that word.

And, like Buddha said, joy followed.  Hopefully, it will stay with me like that shadow.

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The painting at the top is titled Shadowsong.  It’s a new piece, 6″ by 8″ on paper,  that is headed to Erie for my November show, Alchemy,  at the Kada Gallery.  Usually when I have an image of a musician, I will follow on the blog with a video.  So, in keeping with habit, here is The Train From Kansas City by Neko Case, a favorite of mine.  Plus , it has lots of film of trains.  have a great day.

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Exiles: Quartet

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Quote, tagged , , , on October 2, 2013| 5 Comments »

Exiles--QuartetWe all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.

—Albert Camus

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I have written about and showed a number of the pieces from my early Exiles series here on this blog.  It was a very important group of work for me in that it was the first real break towards forming my own voice, creating and displaying work that was emotional for myself.  It was also the work that spawned my first solo show in early 1997.

The inspiration for this work was mainly drawn from the experience of watching my mother suffer and die from lung cancer over a short five or six month period in 1995.  Her short and awful struggle was hard to witness, leaving me with a deep sense of helplessness as I could only wish that there was a way in which I could somehow alleviate her pain.  Most of the work deals with figures who are in some form of retrospection or prayer, wishing for an end to their own suffering.

But another part of this work was drawn from my own feelings of emotional exile, a feeling of estrangement in almost every situation.  I had spent the better part of my life to that point  as though I didn’t belong anywhere,  always on the outside viewing the world around me as a stranger in a strange land,  to borrow the words of that most famous biblical exile, Moses.  These figures were manifestations of that sense of inner exile that I carried with me.

Little did I know that these very figures would help me find a way out of this exile.  With their creation came a sense of confidence and trust in the power of my self-revelation.  I could now see that the path from the hinterlands of my exile was not in drawing my emotions more and more inward, allowing no one to see.  No, the path to a reunion with the world was through pouring this emotion onto the surface of paper or canvas for all to see.

This is hard to write and I am struggling with it as I sit here this morning.  I started writing this because I had been reconsidering revisiting this series, creating a new generation of Exiles.  But in pondering this idea I realized that the biggest obstacle was in the fact that I no longer felt so much a stranger in a strange land.  I no longer felt like the Exile, no longer lived every moment with these figures.  It turned out that they were guides for me, leading me back to the world to which I now feel somewhat connected, thanks to my work.

If there is to be a new series, they will most likely not be Exiles.

The piece shown here, Quartet,  is one of my favorites, a grouping of four figures.  You may not see it in these figures but the visual influence for this work were the carvings found on Mayan ruins of Mexico and Central America.  I myself see this mainly in the figure at the bottom right.

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Satisfied

Posted in Biographical, Influences, Painting, tagged , , , on September 12, 2013| 6 Comments »

GC Myers- SatisfiedIt was twenty years ago this month that I had the accident that started my painting career.  When I began painting at that time, it was not with some long-range goal of becoming a professional artist or even with the thought that anything would come from it.  I was simply looking for a creative  outlet for emotion that was roiling within.  I never had real expectations and didn’t even begin to form any until a year or so after I started.  I had no idea where this would take me nor did I have a notion that my work would take any sort of form that might reach out to people.  It was simply an urge that begged to be fulfilled at the time.

As the years went by, expectations and hopes did begin to take form.  I began to expect to sell my work and to have people take somewhat of an interest in it. I hoped that people would take my work as seriously as I did and that people would look deeper into it.

But the thing that has surprised me over the years is something  that I never expected or had even thought of beforehand.  That is the trust that many people place in me when they confide to me their feelings about the work, often sharing deeply personal stories about their lives.  I have heard many personal stories, some sad and some triumphant,  in the past two decades and seen many teary eyes as they relate their stories.  Each time I am surprised and touched at how open and honest these folks are in sharing the details of their lives with me.  Surprised may not be the right word here.  It was surprising at first  but then  turned to humbling in that I often didn’t feel worthy to be so privileged.  Now, it is still a bit surprising, a lot humbling and totally an honor to be let in on such private emotions.  It is the most gratifying and satisfying aspect of my experience as an artist over the past two decades, far exceeding financial rewards and public acclaim.  It is perhaps the most inspirational element that I carry with me into the studio each morning.

I had no idea that such a thing might happen when I started and still struggle to figure out how it has happened within the framework of my paintings.  It remains a mystery but a most satisfying one.  Thanks for such an unexpected gift.

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The painting shown here is fittingly titled Satisfied and is a 24″ by 14″ piece on paper and is currently at the Principle Gallery.

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Saturday Gallery Talk at the Principle

Posted in Biographical, tagged , , on September 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers-Ode to Whitman

“Ode to Whitman” Will Be the Prize in a Free Drawing Saturday!

I am running around today, trying to arrange everything for my quick trip down to Virginia tomorrow  where I will giving my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Old Town Alexandria, which starts at 1 PM.  A little framing and some paperwork  then hopefully I can concentrate on my talk although if you’ve read this blog for long you know that I generally speak off the cuff in these talks, trying to create a conversation with the audience that allows them to sort of dictate what sort of information comes out.

Sometimes that means talking about technique, which is okay but not my favorite thing to stay on for long, mainly because I think it is a limited subject of interest for the whole audience.  I just can’t imagine anyone be overly interested in my choice of brush or paint unless they themselves paint or unless these things themselves are the focus of the work.  But I will talk about anything including technique though I prefer to talk about creativity, about motivations and influences, those things that propel the work forward regardless of the how-to aspect behind it.

I am always a bit nervous about these events.  It’s not just the nerves that come with talking before a group of people– that’s understandable and easy to work past.  Rather, I worry about sometimes sharing too much information, revealing more of myself than my work, as revealing as it often is, has shown.  I sometimes beat myself up on the ride home over things I have said during these off the cuff talks, wishing that I hadn’t told this story or that story about my life.   I often wish I were that mysterious artist who just produces the work without a word.  But that is not the path I followed as an artist.  I let my life be part of my work, my memories and emotions as integral to the work as the paint or the brush.

What I am struggling to say here is that I never know what i will say which is sometimes  a scary thing but sometimes makes for an interesting talk.  I guess you’ll have to come out tomorrow to see what I mean.

And…. if you do come to the show you can enter a free drawing for the painting at the top, Ode to Whitman, a 12″ by 24″ painting on canvas that was the subject of my blog a few days ago.  Plus, there will a few more  small surprises as well.  So I hope you can make it tomorrow.  1 PM, Principle Gallery, King Street, Alexandria Virginia.

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