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Archive for the ‘Early Paintings’ Category

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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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

***************

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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Trust

Posted in Early Paintings, Personal Mythology, Technique/History, tagged , , , on September 26, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers Early Work ca1994I came across this little piece recently.  It’s a small watercolor on paper that was done in 1994, while I was still developing my own voice and before I began showing my work publicly.  It’s not a great piece of work and will always just live its life in a bin of experiments and other pieces that just aren’t up to snuff.  But this little painting always has meaning for me, providing a lesson in trusting your own instincts as well as weighing the words of guidance given to you.

You see, I had another artist around this time critique my work.  He was a professional artist with years of experience and I trusted his judgement, wanting any feedback that would help me narrow my quest for an individual voice.  On this particular piece he told me that it was sorely lacking, that the figure needed to be more accurate in its depiction, that people would not respond to this kind of rendering.  I  wasn’t positive in his advice but I hesitatingly took it to heart and avoided figures for many years and even to this day hear his words when I consider a figure in my work.

I consider it a huge mistake on my part and wonder what my path might have been had I discounted his advice at that time.  I mistook him for a guide on the creative path to my own voice but what he offered was a route that took me to where he himself was headed.  His guidance was purely subjective, linked to his own vision of how the world looked and should be depicted.

His road was not mine.

Over the years, I have become resistant to listening to others when they begin to tell me what my work should be or where it should be headed.   I also am hesitant in giving advice for the same reason– our destinations may not be the same.

It may not be much but this little piece is a symbol of the trust I now have in my voice and intuition.  It is a constant reminder that it is up to me as to how I use the advice given by those posing as guides on the path.  In this way, this painting is priceless to me.

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Exiles: Cain/ Redux

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Quote, tagged , , , , , on September 13, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- CainI brought up a reference in last week’s Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery that I would share here again.  It’s about a posting that appeared here about five years ago, one that focused on one of the paintings from my Exiles series from around 1995.  It’s a painting that I would never part with for many reasons but mainly for the meaning it holds for me in changing the course of my life at one point.

In 2008, I wrote:

I thought I’d take a moment and show this painting, Cain, another from the Exiles series that I’ve discussed in past posts.  This is a smallish piece and one of my favorites, one with which  I will never part.

He is based, somewhat, on the biblical story of the original exile, one expelled from his homeland after slaying his brother  to create a new world for himself, never to return.  It is also based on the novel Demian by Hermann Hesse, a book that meant much to me when I went through a trying time years ago.  Actually, it seems a lifetime ago.

In Demian, Hesse uses the mark of Cain as a symbol for those seeking the truth in themselves.  He also discusses the dual nature of man, an idea which has had a very formative aspect in my growth as a painter.  The idea of opposing forces, light and dark,  being contained in one element, one being, always struck a chord in me.  It made sense of the struggles that I observed in myself and many others.

He also made a statement that resonated like a gigantic bell tolling for me.

Whoever wants to be born, must first destroy a world.

Without going into detail, that small sentence was a revelation.  It changed my world forever.

I realize this is a fragmented explanation of this painting and the book that influenced it.  I merely wanted to illustrate what personal meaning some pieces can have for an artist as well the serendipitous nature of moments when art and one’s real life converge.

Maybe I will elaborate in the future.  Maybe not…

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Presentation

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, Technique/History, tagged , , on July 7, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- With All Possibility smThis is a painting of mine from a number of  years back, a 16″ by 20″ canvas titled With All Possibility.  For the past several years it has hung in a back room of my studio but has remained a favorite of mine.  It’s part of a group of paintings of mine that is often referred to as the Dark Work which refers to the dark ground on which they’re painted and deep and dark  primary colors of the surface.  This work started in the months after 9/11 as we struggled as a nation to find footing.  This work was my emotional response at the time.  The work never gained the favor of my more typical work but I have always believed that it has something real in it, something that expresses a base emotion with genuine truth.

That’s why I probably give this work a go in the studio  every so often, painting new pieces to see if I still see something in this style.  This particular painting was part of  such a revisit back in 2007.  I thought at the time that this was a strong piece of work and, having had it around for a few years now, still believe so.  But it never raised any interest in its limited visits to a couple of galleries so I tried to figure out if  there was  fault in it.

Sometimes this is the case in some paintings, where I will have strong feelings over a piece that just doesn’t click with anyone.  I may be seeing something that is not visible in the surface of the work– an inspiration or even my own memory of the painting  process– which affects my judgement of the piece.  After some time, I will begin to see this and begin to see that my judgement of it was tainted, that I was not seeing the painting as it really was and, as a result, was missing real flaws in it.  Flaws that deprived it of the life that I thought I was seeing  when in fact I was only sensing my memory of the creation of it.  A big difference.

But looking at this piece, I still felt there was something real, something strong.  The forms, the colors, the textures– it all seemed to work in a rhythm of simple harmony with focus and depth.  Everything I look for in my work.  What was wrong?

It didn’t take long to figure it out.  It was my presentation of the work.  The frame.  At the time of this piece, I tried a very short-lived experiment with some gold-leafed frames, wide flat mouldings with a more classic  style.  I was trying to have the frame add weight to my work and it was a huge mistake.  It was not in any kind of sync with my work and it even went against my own personal rule which always has the edges of my work, on paper or on canvas, exposed.  I have only had a few pieces over the many years where the edges are covered and even those few still nag at me.

But here was this piece in this frame that would be more suitable for a more traditional pastoral scene in oil, its edges trapped under the gold-leafed rim.  It was all wrong.  How could I have not seen this long ago?

I unframed it and I immediately felt so much better, like a weight was lifted off my chest.  Liberated from the golden bindings of that frame, the painting seemed as strong and as vibrant as I had  thought .  I had been trying to present it as something that it was not and in the process had shaded its reality from the viewer.  It now sits without a frame and, if it ever leaves the studio, will have a proper presentation– edges exposed and ready to fly free.

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Signature

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Technique/History, tagged , , on June 21, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers Life Forms ca 2004I spent yesterday working on a piece that was based on the photo from yesterday’s blogpost, one from Paul Strand that featured tiny figures on a sidewalk in a park.  I had translated the composition immediately and could see what I wanted in my head but just could not get it to translate on paper.  It was frustrating and had me flummoxed for most of the afternoon.  I just could not get to the image in my mind, could not achieve the depth and feel that I was seeing.

I wanted to taste a hearty stew  but was only getting weak broth.

I think that it came down to the fact that I had not completely absorbed the composition, had not fully made the transition from the original inspiration to a point where it became my own.  Like learning a piece of music where you are trying to discover the flow and rhythm of it, trying to see the pattern laid down by the original composer before you impose your own interpretation on it.  Making their notes your notes.

This is normally not a a problem for me.  The way I paint allows immediate transition into my own hand normally.  But sometimes when I try to force my work into a pattern that is not mine and is not fully hashed out, the results are less than stellar.

 

The piece at the top is not an example of this.  Rather, this is a the opposite, even though it may not resemble my normal work.  From 8 or 9 years ago, this  started as an exercise where I was just getting back to colors that I strayed from had , each little sliver being combinations of color.  Slowly,  it evolved into this fish-like swirl.  I find myself drawn into the pattern and movement of this and it works for me because it feels pure, feels as though it is my own rhythm and flow even though it doesn’t resemble my typical work.

I don’t know how to put this coherently.  It just feels natural, like writing your own signature.  I’ve down a couple of these over the years and they are among my favorites, probably because of this.  When I compare the easiness and grace of this piece to yesterday’s effort, there is a world of difference.  In this piece I am signing my own name whereas yesterday I was trying to forge a signature.  But if I can ever get to that image in my mind that changes and my signature begins to appear.

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Backtracking

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, tagged , , on June 18, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers Early Interior smI have often shown early work here, stuff from when I was still trying to find a path forward.  Most of it is from before I ever thought  that showing my work in public was a possibility.  As I have pointed out, I still revisit this early work on a regular basis in an effort to stay connected with that time in which the need to create was the only motivation needed.  There’s also an element of backtracking in this as well, trying to put together how this work somehow led to what I do now.

Sometimes it is hard to see the connections as the work is so singular and never followed up on, then or now.  I think those are the pieces from that time that intrigue me the most, making me wonder how my journey forward from that time would have been different had I chosen and stayed on that path.

For example, here are three pieces from around the same time, all painted within a month or so of each other back in 1994.  None really lead directly forward but I really always enjoy seeing these three pieces, wondering what my motivation was at the time.  The first , shown above, is an interior scene that just formed on the paper.  I had no idea what was going to be there, outside of the checkered tablecloth.  I remember that the cross on the wall was a last minute addition, one that changed the whole feel of the piece.  I can understand why I didn’t follow this path but it still makes me wonder.

GC Myers Still Life smThe next was this still life, here on the left.  I remember this piece well, having ambivalent feelings about it as a whole.  I liked the clear graphic look of it but it was almost too clean, too sharp.  It had really good eye appeal but it seemed all surface to me.  I see things from this piece that  I did bring forward, such as some of the clearness of the colors which I like in some instances.  The thing that always strikes me is that I see a face in profile, looking to the right.  Faces subconsciously built into the composition are something I often look for in my work, feeling a curious satisfaction when I find them.  I wish I knew why.  Maybe that’s what draws me back to these early pieces.

GC Myers- Doug's First day on the Job smThe last was one that had a title, Doug’s First Day on the Job.  I remember this as a piece that I viewed as an exercise even as I started, experimenting with forms and color.  The resulting scrum of arms and fists with the strange authoritarian figure in the foreground, hooded and  pointing ominously out of frame reminded me of the chaos and confusion of  a kid’s first day on a new job.  A strange environment with strange new people who struggle with each other and boss the new guy around.  I knew even as I painted this that this was not my path but I enjoyed this piece anyway.  It had a cleansing effect and was a wonderful lesson in color and form .

Plus it made me chuckle.

I don’t know that there is any great connection between these pieces or to my future and current work.  I always wonder though at how these disparate  pieces formed in such a short time, wondering if I have that same burst of energy within me still.  Maybe that is the reason for this backtracking, looking for that energy source, that fount of inspiration.

I don’t know…

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Regression Therapy

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, tagged , on June 10, 2013| 6 Comments »

GC Myers Early Work 1994As I’ve pointed out in the past, I almost always feel a bit out of sorts in the aftermath of  a show.  It doesn’t matter  how the show itself fared.  There is always an awkward, nervous lull that takes place in the days afterward, a feeling of uncertainty marked by a questioning of my direction and my purpose.  The certainty and confidence that builds in the weeks leading up to a show fades quickly away as the “What next?” questions jump to the forefront.   The relative emptiness of the studio which felt so liberating and filled with potential after the show was delivered now seems like a cold void and sends me scurrying, looking for something familiar that will fill this void.

If I were to make an analogy, it would be that I am driving along and have suddenly knocked the gearshift into the neutral position.  The engine races and the momentum going forward begins to decrease quickly.  Or maybe I have even knocked the shifter into reverse because at these points I often turn to going through my old files, taking in images of older work, much of it done before I was showing publicly.

A lot of it is rough but some shows the hints of possibility that I know fed my appetite at the time.   I find it very comforting to revisit this work, marveling at both how far and how I little I have come in the years since.  The things that excited me in the work then  do the same for me now.   We evolve but  basically remain the same at the core.

The piece at the top always catches my eye and makes me pause over it.  I remember the struggle at that time to find a voice and the searching that went with it.  I thought that this might be the direction of my work at the time.  It was liquid and loose and the face emerged from a puddle of pigments almost on its own.  It was one of the first times I felt as though I were divining rather than painting, letting the paint dictate the direction.  I felt like I was only along for the ride, helping facilitate the whole thing.  It’s a difficult thing to describe but it was a vivid moment, one that is right there when I look at this image now.

Maybe that is why I revisit these piece at these times, trying to recapture that sense of wonder that was always at the surface in that early work.  The excitement I feel in the studio now is as powerful but it is a different type of excitement.  Those early moments were giddy with the  possibility of entering an unknown realm whereas now I am simply excited to be tapped into a vein that I realize is there.

As I say, it’s hard to describe.  But it has become part of my process, a way of moving from stage to stage.

Okay, back to my therapy.  I can’t move on until I go back a little more…

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