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Archive for the ‘Literature/ Books’ Category

How To Be Miserable

Posted in Literature/ Books, Motivation, tagged , , , on August 31, 2021| 2 Comments »

How to Be Miserable Steven Pressfield 1

In my younger days dodging the draft, I somehow wound up in the Marine Corps. There’s a myth that Marine training turns baby-faced recruits into bloodthirsty killers. Trust me, the Marine Corps is not that efficient. What it does teach, however, is a lot more useful.

The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable.
This is invaluable for an artist.

Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because these candy-asses don’t know how to be miserable.

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.

The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.

― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

I have been feeling creatively blocked as of late. Nothing is coming easy. Just making that first mark is hard and I find myself spending most days just looking at blank surfaces and not seeing much. 

Oh, and being miserable.

It made me go looking for something that might point me in the right direction to something that could possibly break up this blockage. I’ve been doing this a long so I’ve been blocked before and have obviously overcome it. But I find that there is no one way that works all the time in getting past this. Sometimes it’s a matter of just getting away from the studio for a few days and work on something outside the world of art. Or maybe changing up what I am listening to or watching.

Or reading what others have done in this situation and trying to apply it to my own. 

This search brought me to a book, The War of Art from Steven Pressfield. He’s the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance which was made into a major motion picture as well as a number of historical novels.

In the The War of Art, Pressfield introduces a mythical concept that he calls The Resistance whose sole mission is to keep things just as they are, to prevent anyone from doing anything that affects change in any way. The Resistance achieves this mission through  the creation of distractions and by instilling fears and doubts.

By doing whatever it must to stop one from moving forward.

The passage from his book above, titled How To Be Miserable, doesn’t have anything to do with overcoming The Resistance but it made me laugh. But not because it was ha-ha funny. It was because I recognized myself in the description and the idea that my willingness to accept and tolerate my own misery should be an important aspect of my chosen career struck me in a funny way.

I mean, I am doing something that I might describe as my dream job, getting to create work from my mind and get paid for it. I work in relative solitude and on my own schedule. I have nobody to answer to but myself.

I could go on and and on with the positive attributes of doing what I do. I love what I do and at this point cannot even imagine doing anything else. But even so, I am often utterly miserable. It is like continually existing, as Pressfield puts it, on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.

That doesn’t sound like it should be funny but the irony of it– that something that makes me so happy also often makes me absolutely miserable–just makes me laugh. 

I think Pressfield is right, that anyone who chooses this life has to understand and have a tolerance for their own misery. And interestingly, just recognizing and acknowledging this helps me see the current blockage as simply part of what I do.

It’s a torment that comes with the territory. I don’t like it but I will deal with it and might even use it to my advantage. It might be there just for that purpose.

The tormenting yin to my creative yang.

I don’t know if that’s true but for coming off a time when I have been feeling especially blocked, it feels pretty darn right. I will try to run with that.

 

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Surveyor/ Listening

Posted in Biographical, Literature/ Books, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on July 30, 2021| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Surveyor

“Surveyor“– Currently at the West End Gallery

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

― Gustave Flaubert, November

I often write here about the need to have one’s voice heard, about how we all have a desire to send our message of who we are out into the world. And I do believe this.

But as important as this might be, I often find myself at this time of the year feeling a little tired of my own voice. And a little regretful, especially after openings or talks where I come away feeling that I spoke too much and didn’t listen enough.

It’s as though there should be a certain balance between the two — talking and listening– and I feel like I am out of this balance.  A yin/yang thing, I guess.

I know that I feel a lot better when I listen more and talk less. Maybe this allows the voice of someone else to be heard, someone who may need that more than me in that moment.

And hearing them creates a bit more balance and harmony. For them and for me.

And that feels better because, after all, balance and harmony is what I am seeking with my work.

And myself.

I think that might be the message carried in the piece at top, Surveyor. I see this painting as being about the Red Tree seeking this harmony in the rumor of forests and waves as Flaubert put it, as well as a having a need to communicate with the other distant tree.

Harmony and communication– it falls within the balance between talking and listening.

Okay, enough talking on my part…

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Hejira

Posted in Literature/ Books, Music, Painting, tagged , , , , on July 25, 2021| 2 Comments »

He was different; innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody wanted, this castaway, that, like a man transplanted into another planet, was separated by an immense space from his past and by an immense ignorance from his future.

― Joseph Conrad, Amy Foster

GC Myers-To Other Worlds

“To Other Worlds“- At the West End Gallery

Wow. That’s quite a passage from Joseph Conrad‘s short story, Amy Foster, which was about a shipwrecked emigrant landing in Britain, unable to speak the language. He learns a bit of English and weds a kind local servant girl, Amy Foster, but remains always the outcast, unable to fully express his past or his dreams for the future to anyone around him. His native language is looked upon with suspicion and derision. He dies asking for water in his native language, nobody understanding his request.

I don’t see this new painting, To Other Worlds, in the same tragic light as Conrad’s story but it has that sense of  being in a world that feels completely strange and alien. Maybe it is a world where your language and forms of expression seem odd and untranslatable to those you come across. Your past is, like that described in the Conrad passage, is separated from you by an immense space, forever unknown to those in your present. Your future seems hazy at best as you are unable to plan in world in which you can’t communicate effectively and that you don’t fully understand.

It’s very much the feeling I felt from my early Exiles series. I was still learning to harness the communicative aspects of art and often felt alien in this world. I certainly never felt like I fully understood this place or its people.

I guess that part hasn’t changed significantly. But I have somewhat reconciled my past, present and future with my work. Just being able to communicate with an expression of some sort of inner feeling has made this world seem less strange.

But that feeling of being in a world where one feels out of place in nearly every aspect still sometimes shows up in my work. I think it’s important o hold onto that feeling so that you can recognize it in others and attempt to let them know you see them and understand the landscape they are trying to find their way through.

Okay? Okay.

Here’s this week’s Sunday morning music. It’s Hejira from Joni Mitchell. It fits here in that hejira is a word for a migration, a flight from danger which often places those who flee in the role of the exile, the stranger in a strange land. Joni’s lyrics for this piece, like most of her songs, are wonderful. Certainly feels right for this stranger in this strange land on a gray wet Sunday morning.

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Exultation

Posted in Event, Literature/ Books, Painting, tagged , , , , , on July 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Exultation 2021

“Exultation“- Hanging Now at the West End Gallery

Say you could view a time-lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite storm of beauty.”

The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth’s face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by a widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up-mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back.

A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too swift and intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash frames.

Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and then crumble, like patches of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues that roamed the earth’s surface, are a wavering blur whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any images. The great herds of caribou pour into the valleys and trickle back, and pour, a brown fluid.

Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, like a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life.

― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I’ve been wanting to share this passage from Annie Dillard for some time. When looking for something to partner with the new painting at the top, Exultation, it came to mind.

I see this painting as being about the appreciation for the wonder of the moment in this place. Our whole existence as a species has been a miracle of sorts, taking eons and ages for the conditions of this planet to adjust to a point where we might survive and even thrive.

It is a precious and precarious existence.

As Annie Dillard makes clear, the mark made by humans is but a blip in the time-lapse film of this planet’s history. And each of us, from the greatest figures in history to the most humble among us, is no more than a fleck of dust whirling as background noise.

Our time was always going to be limited in the grand scheme of things. It took, as I say, a miraculous concoction of conditions to create the delicate environment required to sustain us. But that environment is equally as fragile. We may well be shortening our own screen time in that film of this planet’s lifetime.

But in our best of times, as few as they may have been or will be, it has been place of great beauty and abundance. A place that allows us at those moments to sense a seeming harmony between the earth, sea, sky, and all that is beyond this world.

Perhaps our tenuous existence on this planet’s timeline makes those rare days even more precious. Times to exult.

Exultation is a 24″ by 36″ painting on canvas now hanging at the West End Gallery. It is included in my solo show there, Through the Trees, which opens tomorrow, Friday, July 16. There is an opening reception from 4-7 PM Friday at the gallery.

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Moment Revealed

Posted in Event, Literature/ Books, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on July 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Moment RevealedNothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrayed it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.

― Wilkie Collins, No Name

This is another new painting from my solo show at the West End Gallery that opens Friday, July 16. It is 10″ by 20″ on aluminum panel and is titled Moment Revealed.

It’s not the biggest piece but it has a lot of power, at least for me.

In the eyes of Wilkie Collins‘ narrator in his 1862 novel, No Name, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the immutable laws of nature. I believe that as well, though I think there are instances of personal secrets remaining hidden during the lifetimes of those folks involved. But in the long term, I believe that all secrets are subject to revelation if there is someone interested enough to do the detective work.

That sounds like I am talking solely about personal  indiscretions and crimes but it also applies on a grander scale, to the big secrets and questions that the universe poses for us simple humans. They seem like unsolvable riddles to us now but given enough time and interest, the revelation of their truth and answers will become clear to us.

Will that happen soon? In my lifetime or in the lifetime of some reader out there?

Unlikely. However, maybe only one or two secrets coming to light– if we can survive long enough as a species– will change all of our perspectives on our existence.

That certainly happens on a smaller, more personal scale. Sometimes, a simple revelation can change everything in your world. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not so much. I would like to think that this painting refers to one such moment, one where the truth is suddenly right there in front of you. So much that seemed cloudy with uncertainty becomes crystal clear in that moment and the path forward is sharply defined.

One’s purpose and place in the world seems to make sense in that moment.

And that is a good moment, no doubt.

Moment Revealed is part of my new annual exhibit, Through the Trees, opening Friday, July 16, at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. There is an opening reception that I will be attending from 4-7 PM Friday. The show is currently hanging and available for previews. Thank you!

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The Center Found

Posted in Literature/ Books, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on July 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

9921088 The Center Found sm

“The Center Found“- Now at the West End Gallery

Imagination sees the complete reality, – it is where past, present and future meet… Imagination is limited neither to the reality which is apparent – nor to one place. It lives everywhere. It is at a centre and feels the vibrations of all the circles within which east and west are virtually included. Imagination is the life of mental freedom. It realizes what everything is in its many aspects… Imagination does not uplift: we don’t want to be uplifted, we want to be more completely aware.

― Kahlil Gibran

I came across the passage above from writer Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) and felt it matched up well with my interpretation of the new painting at the top, The Center Found. I see it as it being about the Red Tree’s awareness of the many worlds surrounding it and its place and purpose within those intersecting worlds.

As Gibran points, out, that comes with the mental freedom of imagination which allows the Red Tree here to see the possibility of these worlds existing.

So perhaps the Red Tree in some of its many iterations could be a symbol for ones imagination. I can see that being true in this piece and in many others and could easily live with that interpretation since it links imagination with awareness.

Gibran is certainly right that we want to be more completely aware. I am not sure that I completely agree that we don’t want to be uplifted in a spiritual sense. I might be taking liberties here but I think he means we don’t want to be uplifted by others, that our uplifting is dependent on our own actions and understandings.

But I understand his point that without awareness, there is little possibility of being truly uplifted. And I would like to think that in this painting the Red Tree has found that center of awareness, that it feels the intersections of all the worlds around it.

And is then uplifted.

The Center Found is part of my new annual exhibit, Through the Trees, which opens Friday, July 16, at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. There is an opening reception from 4-7 PM Friday. The show is currently hanging and available for previews. Thank you!

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Distant Communique

Posted in Literature/ Books, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on June 9, 2021| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Distant Communique 2021

How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

The new painting at the top, Distant Communique, is included in my current solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery. I think I want to let it stand with the words above from the author Frances Hodgson Burnett, best known for her beloved book The Secret Garden.

A language without words. That’s very much what art is. It implies a common knowledge or understanding of how things are and transmitting it from one being to another with gesture and nuance.

We’ve all experienced it, I am sure. A knowing glance across a room. A nod to someone that speaks volumes. The tilt of a head. The evasion or linking of eyes that reveals so much more than the sometimes clumsiness of words.

It’s with this innate understanding, this intuition, we sometimes recognize kindred spirits without a word. The same goes for those we would be better off avoiding.

There’s more to be said on this but that seems somewhat contradictory to the message. Let me just leave it as it is and you might better understand what I am getting at with the painting.

GC Myers- Distant Communique-Principle Gallery 2021 Catalog Page

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To the Calling Moon

Posted in Event, In the Studio, Literature/ Books, Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on June 4, 2021| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- To the Calling Moon 2021

Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.

― James Joyce, Ulysses

Well, the opening for my annual solo show at the Principle Gallery is tonight. And I am here in the studio, absent again this year.

Last year, though it felt strange in not being there, it felt necessary. Had to be done but it didn’t feel good to not be able to meet with people to talk and get some feedback about my work. But with another year of distant isolation under my belt, this year’s absence doesn’t feel any better.

In fact, it feels worse.

There’s a feeling of disconnectedness, as though I am way out of whatever loop there is surrounding my work.  Like I am some sort satellite like the moon in the new painting above from this show, To the Calling Moon. I am periodically visible but distant and not there most of the time. There’s more to be said about this analogy but I really don’t feel like going into right now.

This sense of isolation is accompanied by a sharp anxiety from the thought that what little control I had over how my work is perceived is even more diminished. I can’t be there as an advocate and explainer for my work, don’t get a chance to personally see and feel people’s reaction to it. To read faces and body language. It’s never quite the same getting second-hand feedback in that it’s impossible for others to fill in the nuances that I sometimes notice.

But the show must go on, even if without me again this year. I am very pleased on an emotional level with this show and hope that those who make their way to the gallery for this show tonight or later feel that way as well. It’s a show of ponderance as To the Calling Moon can attest.

I think this painting is a good choice for today. Like me, it’s a bit blue. Normally, I put myself in the role of the Red Tree in my work but in this case, I may be that moon– distant and silent.

The title of this year’s solo exhibit, my 22nd at the Principle Gallery, is Between Here and There. It opens tonight, June 4, 2021 at their King Street gallery in Alexandria, VA. You can view the show catalog by clicking here. 

Below is a favorite song of mine from Neko Case that seems perfect for this morning, both in subject and tone. Thanks so much.

 

GC Myers- To the Calling Moon Principle Gallery 2021 Catalog page

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Crossroads of the World

Posted in Biographical, Event, Literature/ Books, Painting, Philosophy, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on June 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Crossroads of the World 2021

It was a pity that there was no radar to guide one across the trackless seas of life. Every man had to find his own way, steered by some secret compass of the soul. And sometimes, late or early, the compass lost its power and spun aimlessly on its bearings.

—Arthur C. Clarke, Glide Path

Trackless seas of life.

Clarke’s words above certainly resonate with me. We go through our lives pretty much on our own, with little guidance. Oh, folks will tell you how to live your life but they generally have little more insight than yourself. They usually just want you to adhere to their own perceptions, their own idea of how the world should look. And that’s okay. They are as free to do so as you and I are free to not follow their advice.

But for the most part, we stumble and fumble along on our own, following the bearings of that secret compass of the soul that Clarke mentions.

We all follow our own compass, even if we don’t fully realize it. We subconsciously set courses that we don’t yet recognize for some vaguely defined destinations that are just the inkling of an idea in our imagination.

Along the way, we often seem out of place and lost, as though that compass has indeed lost its power and is spinning on its bearings. We then often recalibrate and give up on that first course we had set and set out for some new destination, one that is often within sight and attainable.

But sometimes, after we creep for what seems like ages through the darkness, row endlessly through the doldrums, and hold on through stormy seas with a shaken compass that we find hard to trust, we somehow, wonder of wonder, find ourselves at our destination, now fully realized.

What a strange thing and wondrous thing.

GC Myers- Crossroads of the World in situ Principle Gallery 2021And that is what I see in the painting at the top, Crossroads of the World. It is, of course, part of my solo show that opens tomorrow, Friday June 4, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

The sun here represents that secret compass of the soul. Its rays light the way forward but its direction is forever wavering and sometimes its face is obscured by clouds of all sorts and sizes, some of our own making.

And the crossroads where the paths cross symbolize the crossroads we come to each day as we make our way toward our destination. Every day is a new crossroad, new choices and paths to be considered and made. Some paths take us into the dark of the forest and some lead us out into the clearing, where we can see ahead for what seems like forever.

I great sense of liberation from this piece, that we are free to ultimately follow our own desires, our own longings. But there is as well as a sense of satisfaction that comes from making your own way, for following through on those desires. For persevering through all the detours and setbacks to finally end up in that place that was a tiny half-baked fragment of an idea when it first appeared in your hopes so long ago.

I guess that sounds like a lot to pull out of a painting but, hey, it’s how I see it at this point in time and space, at this crossroads that I was led to by own secret compass of the soul.

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Harmonia Aeternam

Posted in Event, Literature/ Books, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on May 10, 2021| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Harmonia Aeternam

There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it’s heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: ‘Yes, this is true, this is good.’ This . . . this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don’t forgive anything, because there is no longer anything to forgive. You don’t really love — oh, what is here is higher than love! What’s most frightening is that it’s so terribly clear, and there’s such joy. If it were longer than five seconds — the soul couldn’t endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it’s worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically . . . .

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

I think I understand what Dostoyevsky was describing in the words above. I imagine –well, hope– that most of you have experienced those fleeting seconds where the harmony of everything suddenly becomes evident to you.

All the things that make up the world, the universe, all the planes of existence, and yourself in that rare moment seem to be just where they should be in relation to all other things. It is as though everything is comprised of floating, constantly shifting plates that periodically find themselves in a position where the perfection of eternity is achieved and revealed to the watchful few.

For a few glorious seconds.

Then the plates resume their shifting and harmony seems, at best, just out of reach. Or, in the case of the other extreme, nowhere to be found as the plates shift to a point of chaos and dangerous imbalance.

Maybe that rare moment of eternal harmony –as I know it– is what I am seeing in this new painting that is headed to the Principle Gallery for my annual solo show, Between Here and There, which opens June 4. It has a feeling of great harmony for me, of things being in alignment, in place. And of the Red Tree as a central figure being aware of the unity of time and place in which it finds itself.

I believe I have experienced episodes of those four or five seconds of clarity and I see it in this piece. I am calling this new 24″ by 36″ painting Harmonia Aeternam. I chose the Latin translation for Eternal Harmony because I felt this piece deserved a weightier title.

It’s strong enough to handle it.

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