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Archive for the ‘Early Paintings’ Category

And 20 Years Passed

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on July 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »

 

Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
–Thomas Hardy
*********************

1994 Bottle Factory - GC MyersI came across a group of work the other day and realized that they were from a week almost exactly twenty years ago when I had worked on them.  For instance, the piece above was done twenty years ago yesterday.   The sheer idea of twenty years passing seemed fantastic in the moment.  So much has happened and so many things changed over that time yet I still feel new in what I am doing, still feel like the person who looked with wonder at the painting above.

GC Myers the-heights 1994There have been only a few moments, most in the last year or so, when this passing of time has fully sunk in and I feel as though I am a veteran at what I do, feel as though I am what might be termed an established artist.  Maybe seeing these pieces will cement that feeling in place.

Looking at them, I can see my  confidence burgeoning in my work as I began to better understand the materials I worked with and how to control them.  It was all about learning control at that time.  At the time these were painted I was still torn over how and what I would paint.  I still didn’t fully understand the importance of personal vision and was only trying to harmonize forms and color in a pleasing way.   The  work still captured emotion but it was simply a by-product of being immersed in the process so deeply that it could not help but reflect what I was feeling internally.

As I said, I still feel very much like that same person from twenty years ago.  Outside of my marriage, this is the only thing that I have stuck at for so long and that is probably due to the ever-changing  and constant sense of newness and wonder it produces.  That same feeling that I felt years ago when I painted these is still felt today when I work on something new.  Thankfully, that is one thing that has not changed.

GC Myers factory-view 1994

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American Music

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , on June 16, 2014| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- American Music 1994Last week I wrote about going through some old work and coming across work that had been lost in my memory, work that I seemed to recognize but couldn’t quite remember the how or why of it.  Didn’t have that recollection of the moment that I usually have with my work where I can recall the emotion of that time, recall the instant it excited me and came to life for me.  You know it’s your own work but it remains an enigma, a question.  This is another that I came across last week.  It was marked as being from 1994 and was titled American Music across the bottom.

I have looked at this piece a number of times over the year and know that it came from a time when I was experimenting on an almost constant basis, trying to capture that thing in my mind that I couldn’t quite identify but knew instinctively was there.  All kinds of things poured out, most eventually set aside like this one.   And through the years, looking at this piece always makes me question why I wrote  American Music across the bottom of the sheet it was painted on.  I don’t know if I saw some rhythm in this that reminded me of a generic American music or if I had been listening to some old music.  The Blasters, fronted by Phil Alvin, had a song of that name in the early 80’s that I always liked so maybe that played a part.

But the fact is that I just don’t know.  And there’s something interesting in that, that I get to look at a piece and try to figure out what the artist was thinking without really being sure.  It’s not too often that you get to do that with your own work. And I think that’s why I gravitate to this piece whenever I go through my old stuff.

An enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in paint.

Here’s the Blasters with their version of American Music.  Maybe you can figure it out.

 

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Finding Yourself Anew

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, Painting, Quote, tagged , , on June 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Freedom DreamWhat are we when we are alone? Some, when  they are alone, cease to exist.

—Eric Hoffer

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I was contacted by another author for use of one of my images for inclusion in his upcoming book.  It was an old image, one that I still possessed and had used on the this blog, so I began to go through my files to find it.  Shuffling through the old work, many from before I began exhibiting publicly, brought a number of surprises.  There were pieces, like this one here on the right,  that had slipped my mind and seeing them rekindled instant recognition and memory, like stumbling upon an old acquaintance who you had not thought of in ages.  But there were others that had been lost in my memory and seeing them still only vaguely brought traces of their origin, as though you were again coming across someone who knew you but you couldn’t quite remember them even though there was something familiar in them, something you knew that you once knew.

Looking at these old pieces made me think of  all the time spent alone with these images.  The quote  above from Eric Hoffer came to mind.  What are we when we are alone?  Is that the real you? Or is the real you that person that interacts with all the outside world?  Looking at these pieces, I began to think that the person I was when I was alone had evolved slowly over the years, becoming closer to one entity.  What I mean is  that the person I was when I was alone, my inner voice,  did not always jibe with my outer voice and over time, especially as I have found a true voice in my work, has come closer and closer to becoming one and the same.

I don’t know if I can explain that with any clarity.  It’s a feel thing,  one that instantly comes from holding one of these paintings and still seeing the division that once was in them and in myself.  It is not anything to do with quality or subject or process.  It’s just a perceived feeling in the piece, an intangible that maybe only I can sense.  But it’s there and it makes me appreciate the journey and the work that brought these two voices closer together.

My alone time immersed in these pieces has seldom felt lonely and,  going back to Hoffer’s quote, never did I feel that I ceased to exist in my oneness.  I know people who are like that, that need constant interaction in order to feel alive and vital, but for me it has often felt almost the opposite.   That probably is a result of that division of my inner and outer voices that I have been trying to describe.  When I was alone I was always comfortable with my inner voice and the work that resulted from it served in the forms of companions.

I definitely exist  in my solitude and my work, my constant companion, is my proof.

I am going to stop now.  Enough confession for one morning.  I have new companions on the easel to which I must attend.

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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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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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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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Dark Work

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, tagged , , , , , on November 6, 2013| 5 Comments »

-GC Myers -Dark Work ca 2002I am pretty excited to include a small group of older paintings in my upcoming show, Alchemy, which opens November 16th at the Kada Gallery.  The group consists of four paintings from 2002, all painted in darker tones and without  the Red Tree that inhabits so much of my other work.  This work, which is often called my “dark work,” was painted in the months of 9/11 and reflected the state of mind of myself and most of our nation at that point, seeming less optimistic  and more foreboding in the context of the time.  To me this felt like important work, at least on a personal level, in that I knew that I was completely emotionally invested in each piece.  As much as I can say about anything I’ve painted, this was work that I felt had to be done.

This body of work sold well but there was a general cooling of the art market  in the aftermath of 9/11 which left me with several of these pieces that came back and have stayed with me in the studio for the past decade.  They have remained favorites of mine through this time, always surprising me with their solidness and presence when I pull them out.   In my opinion, they have aged well and time has washed away a bit of that time  in which they were created.  They have now taken on a much different feel for me.  I don’t get that sense of foreboding from them anymore.  If anything, there is a guarded optimism in this work, the distant glows over their horizons seeming more pronounced than I remember at the time.

While all that has changed is the context of time, I now see them as meditative and serene.  I will be interested to see how this work strikes viewers at this show.

The pieces are show individually below, the first being  Desideratum,  11″ by 15″ on paper:

GC Myers- Desideratum smThe piece below is Night Karma which is 16″ by 20″ on paper.

992-091 Night Karma smNext is Dark Cadence which is 9″ by 19″ on wood panel:

995-323 Dark Cadence sm

And finally, here is Soft Dream of Night which is 14″ by 24″ on paper.  I wrote about this piece here several weeks ago.

995-324 Soft Dream of Night sm

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Control of the Narrative/Redux

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Technique/History, tagged , , , on November 2, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Muse 2002

GC Myers- Muse 2002

I am now preparing for my show at the Kada Gallery, Alchemy, which opens in two weeks on November 16th.  Along with all of my new work for this show I am including a small group of paintings from around 2002.  These are paintings that were darker in tone , both visually and emotionally, than my other work at that time, reflecting my feelings in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.  These pieces have not been shown in years and I believe that they have aged well, especially when they are not considered in the context of the time in which they were created.  I am eager to show them again.

I went back in the archives of this blog and came across this posting that speaks a bit more about how I handled the reception for this work when it first went out into the world.  This painting, Muse, is not part of the group.  It is, as noted below, in the  trusted hands of a man who I consider a friend in Virginia.

here’s what I wrote back in 2009:

This is a painting from back in 2002 titled Muse. It was part of a series I was painting at that time, in the months after 9/11, that some of my galleries still call my Dark Work. It was painted in a style that I call my obsessionist style these days, meaning that it is painted by building layers of color over a dark ground as opposed to the reductive style I have used so much in the past where I apply a lot of wet paint, puddles, then pull it off the surface until I reach the desired effect. 

When I was doing these paintings they seemed like a stark contrast to the reductive work, especially given the tone of that time. They were well received although not with same gusto as the lighter, more transparent, work. I felt very strongly about this work but allowed my desire to please the galleries need for my most sellable work override my desire to pursue this work to further levels. I moved back to primarily painting the wetter reductive work and was able to continue to push that work further through color and texture. I never regretted the move back to this work but there was always a little nagging voice in the back of my mind that I hadn’t pushed the other work to its full destination and had let outside influences hinder an inner process. 

I have begun to see my body of work as my own personal narrative, the story of who I am and how I am seeing my world at any given time. In order for it to be so it must be an honest and complete reflection, guided by my own inner muse and not outside forces telling me what I should or should not do. It took a while but I realized that I have the ability and right to control my own personal narrative, to tell my story in my own way. 

I’ve done this in many ways for years already. I am constantly given ideas for paintings or am requested to do commissions but seldom do I follow up on them unless they fit in with where I see my work heading. In that aspect, I normally reject outside influence. I stick to my narrative.

The piece above, Muse, actually fits this post well in that it now belongs to a man who asked me to do a painting of his son, a truly gifted guitarist. He sent me photos and they were wonderful. He was long and lanky with a really interesting ethereal look, a portrait painter’s dream. In fact when I looked at the pictures I could only see him as painted by other painters I know. I struggled for a while trying to do something with this but in the end I realized it wasn’t part of who I was at that point, not part of my narrative. I let it slide and after a long while, apologetically explained this to the father who was extremely gracious. 

So I am back focusing more, at this time, on this obsessionist work, allowing it to be a bigger part of my story. I will continue to paint in the other style but I just feel that there is something waiting to be told, something to be discovered in this other work at this time. That is my decision made without outside influence, my choice for my personal narrative.

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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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Tomorrow Never Knows

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Television, Video, tagged , , , , , on October 3, 2013| 3 Comments »

GC Myers--Fausts Guitar Popular music has played a huge part in storytelling in films and television in recent years.  For example, this past weekend saw the end of the television series Breaking Bad with the final scene of the series having the song Baby Blue from Badfinger playing as it panned up from Walt’s body.  It was an effective use of the song, neatly tying up the series’ theme of the obsession that overwhelmed Walt’s life.  Some have felt that it was even too spot on but I’m not here to debate that.   It just reminded me of some other songs that have been used  to great effect in this  ( Crystal Blue Persuasion will  be  forever linked in my mind to a montage of meth production from  this show) and  other series.

In the Sopranos, which almost always was brilliant in its choice of accompanying music, one of my favorite endings came when Tony Soprano was particularly cruel to his sister, leaving her home and walking down the street as I’m Not Like Everybody Else from the Kinks played.  It just perfectly summed up the scene and Tony’s self-justification for his often horrible behavior.  Just a great scene.

But I think my favorite came in Mad Men, when ad man Don Draper could not understand why his clients, in 1967, so wanted the music of the Beatles for their ads.  It was all just music to him and he felt that any musician could easily put together something similar to the Beatles sound.  The episode ended with Don settling in at home with a drink after putting on the Beatles’ Revolver album on his hi-fi.  The song Tomorrow Never Knows comes up and the  eras suddenly converge for Don, a revelation that the world he knew is changing, moving beyond his control.  It is a beautiful summation of generational change.

Here’s the song with a film that Neil Aspinall put together in developing a third Beatles movie in 1967, which never came about.  The film would have made a wonderful juxtaposition to Don in the show.  The painting at the top is an older piece of mine, Faust’s Guitar.  I did a few versions of this image years ago and it remains a favorite of mine.

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