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Learning Curve

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Influences, Motivation, tagged , , , on September 23, 2015| 4 Comments »

Paulina Garces Reid Ecuador In My Heart 2015

Paulina Garces Reid- ” Ecuador In My Heart” 2015

At the end of my workshop last week, one of the attendees presented me with a painting she had completed during the second day.  She even titled it for me!  Called Ecuador In My Heart it reflects many of the elements- the cities and villages, the sea, the mountains and the trees and flowers– of the native landscape of Ecuador-born artist Paulina Garces Reid.  I love this little painting, the way in which the blocks come together to tell their story and the manner in which Paulina  modulated her colors, which she pointed out are the colors of Ecuador, with dark glazes.

GC Myers Early Experiment 1994I was moved by her sharing this painting with me and amazed how far she, like all of the students, had progressed in such a short time.  I explained that she was at a point with my technique that had taken me months and hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours to reach.  Looking around the room, I could see on every table something that I know I could easily find in my bin of my own early experiments.  I saw one specific experiment of mine (shown here)  in Paulina’s piece, one that hadn’t reached as far as she had in just a handful of hours.

These students had shot past my own learning curve, had easily grasped concepts and processes that took me a long time to develop and master.  Going into this, I didn’t know what to expect as to what I might see from these students or how I might feel at the end.   I do know that after the first day I had absolutely no expectations and couldn’t see myself doing this again.  But that second day changed everything.  Like the students, I had my own learning curve to conquer and seeing the work from Paulina and the others  made me feel that it was something I could quickly get past to make my teaching more effective if there is a future opportunity to do this.

And I guess that’s the thing I take from this.  It established a starting point from where my learning curve began and I can see progress along that curve.  And like the students, it’s exciting to see progress in any endeavor.  So, I may teach again not just for the thrill of seeing others being excited by the work they produce as a result but for my own excitement in learning how to better deal with people, how to better communicate my own experience to them.  Like y paintings, it all comes down to communication…

Thank you again, Paulina, for the beautiful gift.  I will hang it with pride in my studio.

 

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Afterthoughts

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Motivation, tagged , , , on September 22, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Elemental Being smYesterday was a day to crash after a somewhat  hectic week, at least by my standards.  It was a week filled with hurried preparation, a lot of driving, some new experiences , meeting new (and old) friends and far more talking than I am used to.  By the time I finally got to stop yesterday afternoon, I laid down on the floor of my studio next to Hobie, my loving studio cat who had her nose slightly bent out of joint by my absences in the past week, and closed my eyes and quickly fell to sleep to the rhythms of Hobie’s incredibly loud purr of satisfaction.  It was the most satisfying little nap I had taken in some time.

The Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery on Sunday started slowly with a smaller group at its beginning that grew and grew as the time passed until the space was crowded.  That’s always nice because it seems that when the group is larger people are more liable to ask questions.  They are almost a little more shy when it is a smaller group and a larger group gives them cover.  But it ended up being a good talk that I think was entertaining and informative with a nice back and forth flow between us.

I know that I enjoyed myself especially when it was time to give away a few things at the end of the talk.  That’s always a fun time for the audience as well as myself.  It sounds goofy and even a little cheesy but I really enjoy being able to do this at my talks.  I’ve said this before but it’s a small token compared to everything that I have received from doing this.  Plus it’s just great to see the faces of people when they get even a small gift.

It was especially satisfying when two small girls, each no more than 9 or 10 I am sure,  each took home something on Sunday.  They were there with their dad and he told me that they had asked to come to the talk.  The family had two of my paintings, one a large Red Tree and another from the Archaeology series, and the girls love them.  One had brought a drawing she had made copying the composition of their Red Tree painting and the other, a lovely small drawing of leaves.  They asked me to sign them for them and I can’t even begin to tell you how much that means to me, how much it moves and amazes me even now as I sit here.

Leija and Scott DeLisi with me Principle Gallery Talk 2015

Leija and Scott DeLisi with me Principle Gallery Talk 2015

Also, another satisfying moment came when I looked over and  saw Ambassador Scott DeLisi and his wife, Leija, slide into two seats.  I was very surprised since only days before Scott was still in Uganda  in his final days as our Ambassador to that nation before taking retirement from a long and distinguished career in our foreign service, serving as our Ambassador to Eritrea, Nepal and Uganda along with prior posts around the globe.  We have had a mutual admiration– they for my painting and me for Scott’s admirable work abroad and for Leija’s wonderful candor– for some time but had never been able to cross paths–I don’t get to Kampala on a regular basis.  So to finally meet them in person  was just great and I felt like I had known them for many, many years.

I am looking forward to seeing Scott’s new role in retirement as he will continue working in the private sector for efforts to improve the lives of people around the world.  All the best to you, Ambassador DeLisi.  Many thanks to Leija and you  for taking the time to stop in on Sunday.

There are a lot more moments and stories to tell from that day as well as my workshop experience of a few days earlier but I am going to wrap this up.  It was  a great week, one that had way more validation than any one more person should get in that time frame.  I am going to let it all soak in for a while then get back to work, refreshed by the kindness of others.

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Principle Gallery Talk Sunday

Posted in Favorite Things, Motivation, tagged , , , , , on September 16, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Living Flame smI give my annual Gallery Talk this Sunday, September 20, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.  These talks generally are pretty loosely formed and easy flowing conversations between the audience and myself, with a lot of audience participation.  That’s a big part of keeping these talks fresh.  Usually something new or different reveals itself in these conversations.

Over the past several years, an added part of these talks has been the drawing for one of my paintings.  It’s not something I take lightly.  As I’ve said in the past, I want to give away paintings where I feel a pang of loss in giving them away, want them to have some sort of meaning for me so that this is not just an empty gesture.

And it is a real gesture of gratitude.  I am nothing but thankful for all that the people who enjoy my work have provided me both through their buying of my work and in the inspiration which they provide away from the galleries.  Their willingness to examine and respond to my work makes it so much easier to share those things that often stem from places deep inside.  As a result, I try to carefully choose the works that I give away, not wanting to just go the far corner of the closet where I hide those early experiments that make me grimace to look at them now.

I want the selection to matter.  This year’s selection is definitely in this vein.  Shown above, it is titled Living Flame and is a 10″ by 18″ painting on paper.  It is under glass inside an 18″ by 26″ frame so it has some size.  It is painted very much in the style on which my body of work was formed with transparent washes and organic shapes, all surrounding the central figure of the Red Tree.  It is airy and quiet but contemplative, a piece that in many ways could sum up much of my work.

So, I am pleased with this year’s selection and hope you can make it into Old Town for this year’s Gallery Talk which starts at 1 PM.  There are always a few other surprises so I hope you’re there.

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The Making of a Mural

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged , , , , , on September 14, 2015| 2 Comments »

Thomas_Hart_Benton_-_Achelous_and_Hercules_-_SmithsonianBack in June, I wrote about going to the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum to see the painting shown above,  Achelous and Hercules, a wondrous mural from the great American painter Thomas Hart Benton.  It was commissioned to hang in a now-defunct Kansas City department store in 1947 and after the store closed in 1984 this masterpiece was given to the Smithsonian.  It is a 5′ high and 22′ wide wooden panel that Benton painted in egg tempera.  It’s a piece I could stand in front of for hours, losing myself in the rhythms and colors.

That being said, I came across a video taken from an old film that shows the incredibly elaborate process that Benton used in the making of this mural, which took about eight months.  It is fascinating and unusual to see a known masterpiece coming together in all its stages.  It makes me appreciate this painting even more.

Here is that video.  It’s about 11 minutes long and worth the time spent.

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Labor Day/ Working Hands

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, tagged on September 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Since it is Labor Day, I thought I would rerun a post from several years back that is one of my favorites that very much has to do with one of the symbols of labor–the hands of the worker:

working-hands-photo-by-tony-smallman-2008I have always regarded manual labour as creative and looked with respect – and, yes, wonder – at people who work with their hands. It seems to me that their creativity is no less than that of a violinist or painter.

-Pablo Casals

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I came across this shot of working hands and it made me think of how I’ve viewed hands through my life.  I’ve always looked at people’s hands since I was a child.  The liver spotted hands of my grandmother had thin ivory fingers that seemed like translucent china, for instance.

The hands of our landlord Art, an old farmer, were thick and strong and missing at least one digit down to the knuckle on several fingers, the result of an impatient personality and old farm machinery.  Not a great match.  I saw quite a few farmers with missing fingers.

Fat Jack, who I wrote about here a ways back, had hands whose nails were longer than you might expect and permanently rimmed with the black from the oil and grease of the machines on which he was always working.  His hands were round and plump, like Jack himself, but surprisingly soft and nimble, good for manipulating the small nuts and bolts of his world.

There was a manager when I was in the world of automobiles who was a great guy but had extremely soft and damp hands.  It was like handling a cool dead fish when you shook hands.  A mushy, damp, boneless fish.

I admired working hands.  They reflected their use so perfectly, the scars and callouses  serving as badges of honor and the thick muscularity of the fingers attesting to the time spent at labor.  They seemed honest with nothing to hide.  They were direct indicators of that person’s life and world.

My own hands have changed over the years.  They were once more like working hands, calloused and thickening from many hours spent with a shovel.  There are a number of small scars from screwdrivers that jumped from the screwhead and into the flesh time and time again and another on the end of my middle finger from when I cut the very end of it off while trying to cut a leather strap with a hunting knife.  Not a great idea.

I always felt confident when my hands were harder and stronger.  Now, I have lost some of that thickness of strength and the fingers are thinner and a bit softer from doing less manual labor.  I look at them now and wonder how I would have judged them when I was younger, when I measured a man by his hands, something that  I don’t do  now.  I now know there are better ways to measure a life, that the work of the mind is now a possibility– something that seemed a million miles away then.  But when I come across working hands, strong and hard, I find myself admiring them still.

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John Henry

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Music, Opinion, tagged , , , on September 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

John-Henry-statueAnother Labor Day weekend.

I usually focus on the labor aspect of this holiday when writing about it, trying to point out how much our country was shaped by both the toil of the workers as well as the labor unions who fought for and won many of the rights that we now take for granted.  But this year I thought I would focus on a folk song that addresses the role and importance of labor in our lives:

John Henry–  that steel driving man who faced off in an epic battle of man against machine, defeating the steam drill that threatened to take away his job.  Well, sort of defeating it.  I guess a victory is still a victory even if you die in the wake of your triumph.

john_henry_by_fw_long_dehtUnfortunately, John Henry’s great efforts ultimately didn’t save the jobs of the workers who would be displaced by the steam drill.  But it did illustrate the importance of  labor and the purpose it adds in our lives.  Labor has always been that thing by which we have provided for ourselves and our families, from the time we were primarily hunter/gatherers and farmers (which was not that long ago) to the present day.  To take away that ability to provide is to strip away one’s pride and definition as a human.

In that aspect, John Henry’s victory  was more than a triumph of blood and bone over steel and gears.  It was a triumph of the human spirit, a crying out of our need to be necessary in some way, to be undiminished.  And despite John Henry paying the ultimate price for his victory, I think that is why this song still strikes a strong chord with us.

So for this Sunday’s music I will play one of my favorite versions (among many) of John Henry.  It’s from Johnny Cash from his 1963 album, Blood, Sweat and Tears, an album which focused on labor.  I think it captures that idea of purpose really well.

Have a great Labor Day weekend but try to remember the idea behind the holiday.

John Henry William Gropper
 

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Quote of the Week: Lawren Harris

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Quote, tagged , , , on September 3, 2015| 4 Comments »

Lawren Harris- Mountains in Snow 1929

Lawren Harris- Mountains in Snow 1929

The power of beauty at work in man, as the artist has always known, is severe and exacting, and once evoked, will never leave him alone, until he brings his work and life into some semblance of harmony with its spirit.

—Lawren Harris

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The more I look at the work and read the words of the great Canadian painter Lawren Harris (1885-1970), the more of a fan I become.   His work was never about  capturing the physical reality of place.  No, it concerned itself with capturing the emotional response to the and harmony and spiritual nature of place, to evoke that power of beauty that has moved him.  It reminds me in that sense of  Edward Hopper’s work.

I am totally enamored with his paintings of the great white north in fantastic colors and forms but have been recently looking at his more abstract work and find then every bit as beautiful and engrossing.  They possess that same degree of feeling of his more representational pieces yet move into an even more internal space.  I find them intriguing and inspiring.

There is a book on the work of Lawren Harris coming out in a few weeks, co-authored by actor/comedian/art collector Steve Martin, The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris,  that will be attempting to take Harris from being portrayed as  just a Canadian painter and place him highly in the larger context of all art.  It’s a book to which I am looking forward.

Lawren Harris The Spirit of the Remote Hills 1957Lawren Harris - abstractLawren Harris- Abstract #7 Lawren Harris- Abstract Painting #20 Lawren Harris abstractlawren harris-mt-lefroy LawrenHarris-Mount-Thule-Bylot-Island-1930

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September Song

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , , , on September 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- September Song sm

GC Myers- September Song 2014

August has finally and thankfully passed.  You would think as one gets older you would want to hold on to every moment–every day, week and month– but August never passes quickly enough for me.  This distaste for August has given September an almost magical appeal.  The very sound of the word feels cool and easy in my mind.

Relieved from the hard edges and sharpness of August, September brings cooler air and falling leaves.  Time passes just as quickly but there is a calmness which allows for reflection.  In September, I often find myself stopping and just standing,  looking into the sky and absorbing the moment, glad to just be where I am.

Maybe that’s why I love the old song September Song.  It’s a wistful reflection on the passing of time and aging.  Composed by Kurt Weill, it was written for  and  first recorded by Walter Huston for the Broadway play Knickerbocker Holiday in which he plays Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of New Amsterdam (present day New York) in the 1600’s.

The play didn’t have much success but the song, written for Huston’s limited vocal range and rough voice, has lived on as one of the great standards of modern music, recorded by scores of artists over the years. Today I thought I would play a beautiful version from the one and only Ella Fitzgerald.  As I look out of my studio window, it is cool and foggy and the words and sound of this song just feel so right for the first day of September.

Have a great day.

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Edward Calvert’s Visionary Prints

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , , , , on August 31, 2015| 4 Comments »

The Chamber Idyll 1831 Edward Calvert 1799-1883

Edward Calvert The Chamber Idyll 1831

Edward Calvert was a British artist born in 1799 .  He was trained in the Royal Academy as a painter and had a distinguished career as traditional painter of his era.  But in his early years, he also learned wood and copper engraving as a member of a group of artists who were followers of visionary artist and poet William Blake.  They called themselves The Ancients.

It was during this time that Calvert created a series of prints from his engravings that are considered visionary masterpieces.  I know that when I look at them they seem to be out of time and almost modern in feel, certainly not something you would expect to see from Britain in the 1820’s.  His last engraving from this time was The Chamber Idyll, shown at the top, finished in 1831.  It is considered his masterpiece and would be the last print he ever did, abandoning printmaking altogether to pursue his career as a painter.

He didn’t carry the visionary feel of his early print work into his paintings, choosing to work in the traditional style of the time.  While he had a long career as a painter, his painted work is not considered in the nearly the same regard as his prints which are considered to be some of the most important British prints made. I think they are pretty wonderful and  find myself just staring at them, taking in each composition’s  design and use of space within the picture.  Just beautiful…

The Sheep of his Pasture circa 1828 Edward Calvert

Edward_Calvert_-_The_Ploughman_

Edward Calvert- The Ploughman 1827

Edward Calvert The Brook 1829

Edward Calvert -The Lady and the Rooks 1829

Edward Calvert -The Flood 1829

Edward Calvert -The Cyder Feast 1828

Edward Calvert -The Bride 1828

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Highway 61 Revisited

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , on August 30, 2015| 1 Comment »

Highway 61 Revisited Album CoverI wrote earlier this week about the 40th anniversary of Springsteen’s classic LP, Born to Run.  Just a day or two later came another anniversary of another landmark album, this one marking  50 years since Highway 61 Revisited from Bob Dylan was released back in 1965.  It has remained a critical favorite over the decades, coming in at #4 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  Of course, lists like that are pretty subjective but in this case, I tend to agree.

It was Dylan’s first all electric outing after making the transition from purist folkie to rock star with his prior album, Bringing It All Back Home, which was part acoustic folk and part electric rock.  With Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan went all in and made an album that was a real document and catalyst for the turbulent times in which it was made.  It is said that the 1960’s, as we have come to remember them as an era, started with this album.

I know it has long been a favorite of mine.  It’s an album that has been with me for so long that it doesn’t seem to be of any time, regardless of its age.  It just is.  Every song holds up and each is like a full and rich meal.  It’s filled with a meaty mix of words and textures and meanings that just fills you up.

So, for this week’s Sunday morning music,  what could be more fitting than the title track from this classic from half a century ago?  It’s a song that never gets to get my blood moving.  It’s been covered by a multitude of other artists and I don’t know that I ever heard a bad cover of it.  Here’s the original.  Have a great Sunday!

 

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