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Archive for the ‘Early Paintings’ Category

A Look Back: Respice Finem

Posted in Early Paintings, In the Studio, tagged , , , on May 18, 2026| 3 Comments »

Respice Finem (1999)– Coming to Principle Gallery, June

Respice finem; that is to say, in all your actions, look often upon what you would have, as the thing that directs all your thoughts in the way to attain it.

― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

The Gesta Romanorum is a early 14th century Latin collection of anecdotes and stories, most carrying a moral meaning. It was greatly influential as a source of material for generations of writers down through the centuries, such as Chaucer, Boccacio, and Shakespeare.

One of the tales concerns a certain King Dominatius who is approached by a traveling merchant who offers him three invaluable rules of wisdom for a hefty price. The King pays the price and is given the three tidbits which are:

  1. Quidquid agis, prudenter agas et respice finem translates as “Whatever you do, do it wisely, and consider its consequences or its end.”
  2. Never tell a secret to a woman or your dearest friend.
  3. If you leave your path for a shorter one, you will often find it longer and more dangerous.

The King was so taken by the first rule, Respice Finem, that he had it inscribed throughout his castle, even on the towels used while he was shaved. Though he is fair-minded and just ruler, he nonetheless has enemies surrounding him at court. They bribe the King’s barber to assassinate the King by cutting his throat while shaving him. Ready to do the act, the barber catches sight of the words on the King’s towel. He stops and thinks of what will become of him if he goes through with the deed, which would most likely be torture then crucifixion. Heeding the wisdom in considering the end of his actions, he drops the razor, thus ending the treasonous plot and saving the King’s life.

Over the years, Respice Finem, while serving as a warning to consider the long-term consequences, has also come to be viewed as a Memento Mori, a reminder of one’s mortality, to live so that your life will be approved after your death.

That brings us to the painting at the top, Respice Finem, which has been with me in my studio for most of the time since it was painted in 1999. It has become so ubiquitous to me that I don’t even remember why it stayed here for so long. It was always just here.

Maybe it was that title, reminding me to keep in mind that life is ephemeral, as well as that what we do today often has consequences in the distant future.

Maybe. Who knows?

Whatever the reason might be, this smaller painting is heading to the Principle Gallery for my June solo show there. As I have pointed out here, this year’s show will be hybrid retrospective of my work, combining new work with older examples from different points in my painting life.  I feel it is a fine example of my work from 1999, painted as it is in transparent inks over a surface treated with gesso, which at that time I was just starting to use. The segmented sky also signifies the process I employed while transitioning to larger work. At the time, I was working with small blocks or puddles of color and to make a larger piece I would sort of mesh together smaller blocks to cover a larger area.

It also has a sense of stillness that was the primary goal for my work then. Actually, it still is the goal.

It has lived well with me, and I have tried to heed the advice it has readily offered.

What more could I ask?

Well, there is still much to do in preparation for the show. The last few days have been rough, physically, so I am glad I began final prep work much earlier than normal in my process. Everything seems to be moving at a snail’s pace, just trying to conserve energy. But even that slower pace at much shorter intervals seems to drain me– much more than I had expected several months ago when I was planning for this. It seems that the fatigue I am experiencing, the added effort of the work itself, and the normal anxiety that comes with any show are a potent combo.

I guess I underestimated the effects of it all and overestimated my own ability to overcome it. Suppose I should have spent more time considering the message of the painting– Respice Finem. Consider the consequences.

That being said, today, as the song below from John Prine says, will no doubt be a Long Monday. One day, one step at a time…

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A Look Back: The Misfits

Posted in Early Paintings on May 13, 2026| 2 Comments »

I do not know of any salvation for society except through eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, people who protest.

–William O. Douglas, Discussion on the Free Society, 1961

I’m not sure the words from the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas have anything to do with the paintings shown at the top, I just really like his quote on the need for the freedom of speech that enables and nurtures the eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, protesters, and all the other oddballs and weirdos. They are often the engines of progress and always the ones who add spice to this life.

I was working in the basement of my studio yesterday. It’s where I now do my framing. The space has a retro 60’s vibe with its cheesy wood paneling and carpet that looks like it may have come from an old casino. I don’t even notice the carpet or paneling anymore. I also realized yesterday that I also no longer notice the things hanging on the walls down there. But yesterday took a moment to look at some of the things hanging on the wall.

It’s a group of paintings that feels like they are oddballs, kind of a basement version of the Island of Misfit Toys. There is a painting from 2000 called Memento Mori that doesn’t deserve to be relegated to this space. It has a sort of regal feel amongst the other pieces, as though it knows this. Like an exiled monarch waiting to return to their throne. Then there is a folk-art painting of a black lab curled up that I call Winston Churchill for reasons I can no longer recall. I’ll sj=how these two pieces some other times along with another painting from 1998 that, like Memento Mori, deserves a better place to rest its weary self.

The pieces I wanted to talk about are the two shown at the top. Yes, I know there are four images. You’re not telling me anything I didn’t already know, smart guy. They are from around 1998 from a short period in which I was interested in some way of creating two side paintings. I’m not sure why it so interested me at the time. But it did. I actually did one of these two=sided pieces that found a home. It was painted on both sides of an old cabinet door and was hung with a black iron chain that ran between wrought iron hooks attached to the side of the door panel. Its current owners hang it in a open through window (is that the right term?) where one side can be seen from each of the two rooms.

The pieces above were experiments. I say experiments now but at the time I didn’t view them as such. It was just an idea to be chased and I would use whatever was at hand to reach it. They are painted on gesso-coated pieces of plain plywood which is not an ideal surface in any way. Though that didn’t stop me, I knew pretty quickly that these were destined to be experiments. Even so, I painted them with all earnestness and effort. I believe in maximum effort when it comes to my work. That’s probably why I don’t do studies.

These paintings have knocked around with me for about 28 years now, so they have seen some rough conditions at times. The pair on the left with the horizontal orientation is a favorite of mine, probably as a result of the coffee stain that shows on the lower right side of the bottom image. I probably should be more irritated by this obvious flaw but it actually makes me kind of happy. I have mentioned how I like to see the hand of the artist in works– a stray bristle, hair, or scuff on the surface that captures a moment when the artist at work. This sort of falls in that category though this happened well after it was painted.

The left-hand image on the vertically oriented pieces on the right is probably the best, most fully realized, of all the images. I think it is a beautiful image. Unfortunately, the piece of plywood on which it is painted experienced a bit more expansion and contraction which caused the gesso surface to crack. It also has numerous drilled holes from some crackpot idea I probably had at the time about mounting this piece.

But I don’t care too much. That just gives them a little character.

I feel bad for often working down there without noticing them at all. And when I do look at them, I am only seeing one side. But, even so, they give me a lot of pleasure in that funky space when I do pause to take them in.

They are my misfits, after all.

And I have a special place in my heart for the eccentrics and misfits, the weirdos and the oddballs that make this world a special place.

Bill Doulas would know what I mean by that…

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Flow

Posted in Early Paintings, Event, Painting, Poetry, tagged , , , on May 11, 2026| 4 Comments »

 

Flow– Coming to Principle Gallery, June

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower (1922)

My annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery opens in a little over a month, on Friday, June 12th. I have been in getting things together for the show in recent weeks, as I normally would though at a much slower pace. Still battling fatigue which requires that there be an almost equal amount of rest for any real effort made. This was to be expected after my recent radiation treatments so early in the year, the Principle Gallery and I decided that this year’s show would be a hybrid retrospective exhibit, a mix of new work and older work, covering the nearly thirty years my work has been showing there, as well as some representing my earliest work.

 I would prefer a show of only new work for this show, my 27th at the Principle. There’s something exciting about unveiling a group of new work. Sometimes it’s exciting like opening a wrapped Christmas present and sometimes it’s more like being handed the gun during a game of Russian Roulette. You never know.

But things being as they are, I am happy to put together this hybrid show. It’s been really interesting going through my older work and reexamining them with a newly critical eye. Fortunately, it’s gone pretty easily thus far.  The hard part is not in trying to determine which pieces fit into this show as I see it but rather which pieces I cannot include.

I believe that is because the title and theme for this year’s show is Flow. I wanted this show to show how the work has changed over the last thirty years but also how it has maintained a throughline in its identity and feeling.

A continuum.

A flow.

Like drops of water in a stream that moves forward and merges with and grows as it runs toward its place in the great waters of the earth.

I cross a small footbridge every morning while walking to the studio. It’s a runoff creek that dries up in the summer, much more often now than it did thirty years ago. But on those days when the creek is running, the thought that this humble trickle of water is destined to someday move through the Chesapeake Bay and merge with the Atlantic brings to mind the unity that makes up this world.

It seems small but contains greatness.

That’s how I would like to have this work come across, as part of the flow that sees small drops merging into a greater body.

I think the final lines from the poem at the top, Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower, sums it up beautifully:

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

These were, fittingly, the final lines of the final poem in his 1922 book, Sonnets to Orpheus. These lines spoke to me because when I began painting, I felt unheard in the world. Small and insignificant.  Each painting was a small droplet put out into the stream. Over the years, these droplets moved from stream to river, bay, and ocean, continually gaining momentum, proclaiming in its voice that comes from its humble origins in a tiny creek running through the wood: I flow, I am.

I flow, I am…

 

 

 

 

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Epiphany?

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, tagged , , , on May 9, 2026| 6 Comments »

Epiphany (2015)

I think a lot of people have unreasonable expectations because they never stop to consider what life actually has to offer them. They’re always looking for some great epiphany from the skies. They never stop to consider the fact which human beings find hardest to recognize: “Maybe I’m not worthy of an epiphany.”

–Robertson Davies, Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

The painting above, Epiphany, is another painting that will be heading to the Principle Gallery for my June show. It’s a painting that satisfies me on several levels. The contrast of the corona of light around the Red Tree against the underlying darkness of the black underpainting and the deep reds and yellows are right in my sweet spot. It also connects with me on a personal level, bringing to mind a very early painting that I might consider my one true experience with epiphany.

The word epiphany, of course, denotes someone experiencing a sudden and profound realization. A Eureka! moment. I never really thought about such things before. I mean who has time to seek something like epiphany when you’re just trying to get by in this world? And even if I had thought about it, I would have no doubt ascribed to the words above from the late Canadian man of letters, Robertson Davies, that you could waste your life seeking something that will never be available to you while the miracle of this world and our existence in it is in plain sight all the time. I am pretty sure I would not have seen myself as being worthy of an epiphany.

But you never know, do you? After my accidental fall from a ladder brought me to painting in late 1993, I began to spend several hours a day painting in between my job as waiter in a pancake house and working towards completing the construction of our home. I didn’t have any expectations at that point, never saw it doing anything other than providing an outlet for expressing pent up emotions in a constructive way. I would have been happy with that.

Well, I think would have been. It didn’t turn out that way so how can I really know what I would felt if that had been the case?

Anyway, as I worked in our back bedroom for several months, I began to feel that my painting had something more to offer me but I wasn’t seeing it. And to be honest, I had no idea what it might be or what it would even mean if I were to come across it. How would I know such a thing?

I tried to not think about such things and just focused on what the painting was giving me in the moment. Just seeing it develop and progress seemed to be enough.

One evening that summer, after doing my morning shift then working for a few hours on our house, I went home and sat down to paint. I was working on a small painting and suddenly it beckoned on me that what I was looking at was exactly that thing I was looking for. It suddenly had form and substance. More than that, I could see it in a flash that it instantaneously opened a path forward for me. I didn’t know where it would lead but I knew that it had to be followed.

I remember so distinctly that moment. I felt a giddy excitement that was a shock to me. The hair on the back of my neck was raised and my heart was racing. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, what do you do when something hits you like that? Nobody told me that something like this might happen. I needed to tell someone about this, but Cheri was still at work.

First View (1994)

I paced anxiously for a couple of hours, waiting for Cheri to return. I met her at the door and made her follow me into the back bedroom. I picked up the small piece of watercolor paper that held the painting. I can’t remember exactly how it was phrased but I said something like, “Look at this! Look at this!”

She looked then replied, “Yeah. It’s nice. What is it?”

“You don’t see it? That’s IT!”

“What’s it?

“This is what I have been looking for. This means something. I don’t know where or what, but this is going to take us somewhere.”

I told her how it came to be and my explosion of emotion when it appeared. I still am not sure she was impressed or convinced by what I was saying that night. In retrospect, I can understand that. It’s a quiet, simple little piece. It doesn’t yell or wave its arms to grab your attention.

But that didn’t matter to me. In my eyes that night– and even now– it set off explosions in me that blew down walls that had been hindering me from seeing the path that was now before me. It felt like it had opened up a whole new section of synapses in my brain that I had not been using up to that point.

I later titled it First View since it felt like I was looking at a newly discovered and unexplored vista. This unassuming little painting still retains its power for me. Every painting since this piece has been an attempt to recapture that explosive reaction that I felt on that summer night in 1994. There have been potent and wonderful moments from other paintings but none that came close to the feeling this painting provided.

Was that an epiphany? I don’t know. But if it wasn’t, maybe like Davies said, I wasn’t worthy of an epiphany and will probably never experience one. I don’t know that I could physically or mentally handle a real epiphany if that wasn’t one.

But epiphany or not, the painting above symbolizes and very well captures that moment from 1994. It is a direct descendant of First View and being so, carries elements from it that speak clearly to me, providing moments that recall that first epiphany, if that is indeed what it was. Letting me know that I was not mistaken in following the path I was given.

And that satisfies me in all the best ways.

What more can I ask?

 

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The Man with the Blue Guitar

Posted in Early Paintings, Poetry, tagged , , , on June 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- exiles-blue-guitar 1995This morning, I came across a piece from poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) which was fortunate as I was inclined to not write anything this morning. I didn’t write anything the day before yesterday when the internet was down here as a result of a squirrel chewing on the  cable on the pole outside the studio. They do that type of thing all the time.

That cable issue kept me from maintaining my streak of posting something every day and it didn’t feel bad. And that pleased me because I sometimes need to get things done and the early morning is when I am best suited, physically and mentally, to tackle them. Not worrying about posting something is a big relief.

That’s a lot of explanation for saying not too much. Anyway, the point here is that I found a poem that reminded me of an early painting, Blue Guitar from my Exiles series from back around 1995-1996. Actually, it fits it perfectly and I thought I would share a reading of it from Tom O’Bedlam who I have featured here a few times recently.

If you’re so inclined, take a short minute or two to give a listen and see if you see the connection.

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Late Fragment

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Poetry, tagged , , , on May 13, 2021| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Late Fragment- Raymond Carver ca 1997 sm

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

–Late Fragment, Raymond Carver

I was looking for something yesterday in the bedroom here in the studio that I call the library. It’s a room lined with bookshelves and the floor littered with boxes with old unframed paintings. It’s a great place in which to retreat when I am feeling stuck. I can pull out a book and read a passage that I haven’t thought of since I last read it, in some cases that being forty years ago. It always feels like there is something new or old or, at least, interesting to find in there.

But yesterday I stumbled across two long thin pieces of old matboard held together with artist’s tape. I couldn’t remember what might be sandwiched between them and opened it, revealing the piece shown at the top. Seeing it brought back a flood of memories.

It was an old painting done back in the 1990’s, probably 1997. It is called Late Fragment after the short Raymond Carver poem above. I had once had it framed and displayed it at the West End Gallery many years ago. I remember distinctly discussing it with several folks at an opening. But it eventually came back to me and for some reason it ended up being unframed. It obviously has bounced around in my old studio in the woods and now my current one as it is stained and a bit grimy.

But there are things in it that had slipped my mind that came back yesterday. I remembered that this piece was originally meant to be in a handmade book of my small paintings accompanied by favorite short poems. I did a couple back around that time. I haven’t seen them in many years and have no documentation on them that I can find but I remember binding them with thick heavy thread along with bookcovers made from heavy dense cardboard covered in rice paper. I would love to see them again.

This piece was meant to be in the center of one of these books and would fold out to reveal itself in whole. You can see the creases where it was folded which gave it a segmented look that I have replicated in paint may times since. If I remember right,  the heavy watercolor paper made it too thick for the book in which it was intended so it ended up in a frame instead.

It’s not a great piece. There are so many ways in which it would be different now. But there’s something in it that is endearing to me. Maybe it’s rawness of it which is accentuated now by the grime and stains that adorn it. Maybe it’s attraction comes from this as a metaphor for the aging process we all go through.

Or maybe it’s the nascent quality of the painting itself. The way the tree is handled as more of a silhouette than with real details of any sort. Or the tiny sun/moon off in the distance. That was not uncommon in my work at that time.

Or maybe it was just the reality and potential held in it. It was a whole entity then, both as a painting and as a symbol of who I was then. It remains true now but I have changed in the intervening years and while I remain basically the same, I am different. My views and ways of expression have changed and evolved, hopefully for the better.

But who knows? Maybe twenty some years from now, if I can keep myself alive that long, I will look back on this post or a recent painting and say the same thing:

Yes, that was me and while all in it is still true, this is where and who I am now. 

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I Feel Free

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Music, Process, tagged , on April 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers Early Work 1994-Winter Park

From my seat here, I am looking across the studio at a canvas on the easel. It was nearly finished when yesterday’s painting session came to an end. It was just at that point where it was making the vital transformation into something more than just paint smeared on a surface. The most exciting and gratifying part of the process for me.

Thoughts of this piece  haunted me all last night and were there waiting for me this morning. I was envisioning where my next move on the canvas would come and how it would blossom after that.

I found myself eager to move quickly through the woods and over to the studio.

Almost compelled, as though I had no choice in the matter. That painting was demanding my presence in its service, like I was serving some sort of strange psychic bondage to it. As though it was something that needed to released for my own wellbeing, and the sooner it was done, the better.

The difference, of course, that this is a voluntary thing, a welcomed binding to service. I don’t feel restrained by this.

Instead, I feel freed by the ability to follow this impulse.

It’s a hard thing to describe. And to be frank, I don’t have the time this morning to try to do so any further. That painting is waiting to be released out into the world from its own bondage. Got to go set it free.

Here’s a fitting song, I Feel Free from Cream from many moons ago, back in 1966. It has a real atmospheric, cinematic aspect to it. The painting at the top has no relevance here at all. It’s just an early piece from around 1994 that I call Winter Park. I include it this morning just because it pleases me and I am free to do this.

Enjoy.

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Good Thievery

Posted in Advice, Biographical, Early Paintings, tagged , , , on April 2, 2021| Leave a Comment »

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”

― Jim Jarmusch, MovieMaker Magazine #53 – Winter, January 22, 2004 

GC Myers - Early Work 1994A friend of mine has picked up his brushes and is attempting to try his hand at painting. He sent a message saying that he was kind of copying my work and hoped that it was okay with me. I told him that it was perfectly fine. In fact, it was expected and maybe even necessary for someone to “borrow” from others.

That’s how I started painting, after all. For example, this watercolor from back in 1994 is my take at that time on the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. Some of you may see it immediately and some may not. I know that’s all I see when I look at it.

I liked this piece at the time but knew that it wasn’t enough of mine to really show. I hadn’t transformed it enough, hadn’t proclaimed it with my own voice.

To be honest, I didn’t fully have my own voice yet. But doing pieces like this and others that were derived ( a fancier way of saying stolen) from the work of others helped me get there.

“Borrowing” is a big part of making art. Like filmmaker Jim Jarmusch states above: Nothing is original.

You first take, but then you add your experience, your perceptions, your own way of expression to make something that is something all its own even though it may have the DNA of others within it.

The idea is to get to a point where you have transformed all your stolen ideas into something that is singular and honestly your own.  Something beyond what you first recognized in the work of others.

That’s good thievery.

 

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Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out

Posted in Early Paintings, Music, Painting, Process, tagged , , , on March 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Folk Blues- LeRon's Yellow Guitar -GC Myers 1994

This morning, I thought I would combine another old piece with this week’s Sunday morning musical selection. The painting above is one of my earliest pieces, completed in early 1994.

It was at a point before I had what I considered then and now to be a breakthrough with my work. I was still working with watercolors solely and using them in as close to a traditional manner as someone who is self-taught can. I still find the qualities of that medium really appealing and use many of them– in a manner that is adjusted to fit the way I think– in much of what I call my transparent work with inks.

This piece was titled which meant that I saw something in it that deserved a name. That’s one way I judge some of this earliest work. There are some pieces in my files that don’t have titles which means that while I may like the piece or see something of value in it, I don’t feel it is complete and whole.

I think I saw this piece as being whole even though at the time I didn’t feel it was good enough to exhibit. Maybe it wasn’t that I didn’t think it was good enough, maybe it was more that by the time I was showing my work a year after this my work had changed, moved away from this style.

It’s titled Folk Blues/ LeRon’s Yellow Guitar. It certainly has flaws but there is much in it that I like.

Anyway, thought this would pair up with an old blues tune written and first recorded in the 1920’s, Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out. This version is from early blues artist Scrapper Blackwell who is an interesting case.

Blackwell was born in South Carolina in 1903 and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana as a child. He built a cigar box guitar and taught himself to play, becoming a performer in the Indy/ Chicago areas as a teenager. Around this time he met and partnered with pianist Leroy Carr. In the late 1920’s until around 1935, the two were very successful as songwriting and recording artists. One of their best known songs was Kokomo Blues which was later transformed into the song most of us know as Sweet Home Chicago.

The duo lived pretty large at that time with lots of drink and partying. However, Carr died from physical complications from this lifestyle in 1935. Blackwell floundered for a couple of years before dropping out of the musical scene altogether. He settled into an obscure life in Indianapolis as a manual laborer in an asphalt plant for the next 20 years. In the late 1950’s he reemerged as a musician, recording several albums of his early blues over the next few years. The song below was recorded during this period and is pretty poignant in that at that time he truly knew the highs of stardom and the lows of poverty and obscurity.

His renewed career was taking hold at a time when the blues were undergoing a revival in the early 1960’s when he was shot and killed while being mugged in an Indy alley in 1962. He was 59. As a result, his influence in the blues revival never really extended out to the wider audiences that other blues artists were able to tap into in the mid 1960’s. Most of you have most likely never heard of Scrapper Blackwell.

This is a really nice recording of an old blues song. The kind of song LeRon at the top would feel right at home with. Give a listen to Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.

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The Sky Is…

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Process, Quote, tagged , , , , , on March 27, 2021| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- The Sky Is Always the Sky 1995 sm

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Thought I’d share another older piece, one that also never found its way out of the studio. Some times the reason they stay with me is obvious and other times not so much. This small piece falls in the not so much category.

It’s from mid 1995, not long after I first started showing my work publicly. Across the bottom of the piece of watercolor paper on which it is painted is the title The Sky Is Always the Sky along with the date it was painted in 1995.

Looking at it now, I can’t figure out why I felt it wasn’t worthy to show at that time. I am actually pretty pleased to be able to show it now. It has much in it that I wish would show up in my work now, twenty five years later.

For example, its utter simplicity and the gracefulness of its linework. Well, my definition of gracefulness, anyway. There’s also the way the layers of color go together so well with the grainy pigments of the cobalt blue settling into the shallow pits of the paper above a sepia underlayer.

Looking at it, I realize that many of the changes that took place in the following years in my work were material related. A few years after this I went from employing traditional watercolors in my work to acrylic inks. The difference is that the inks have a more and finer pigments which make their colors more explosive, more impactful. There is a difference in the more subtle aspects of the watercolors that is hard to replicate with the inks. This piece is an example, at least by my analysis.

Another difference was that I also began using a gessoed surface a few years later which also brought dramatic changes to the work. The positives of using gesso outweigh not using it for me but the beauty of cotton watercolor paper and its tactile appearance is undeniable.

The other difference was that the brushes I was using at the time were  wonderful Winsor & Newton round brushes that have long since been discontinued. These round brushes had a different brush profile than almost any other round brush I have been able to find since that time. I use a round brush almost all the time in my wet work even when a flat brush might sometimes be a more obvious choice. I like the organic quality it gives the work and the linework it produces. Brush choice has a big impact on how the work appears and I am still trying to find brushes that have the same qualities as those old W&N brushes.

Anyway, looking at this old piece again so closely gives me inspiration, makes me want to revisit those elements that make it work so well for me. We’ll see

Here’s an old Chris Isaak song, a favorite that is centered around a particular blue sky. It’s the tone I would like for this piece. Here’s Blue Spanish Sky.

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