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Pax Terram

Posted in Biographical, In the Studio, Music, Painting, Poetry, tagged , , , , , on July 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Pax Terram 2021

“Pax Terram“– Now at the West End Gallery

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

― Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

The painting at the top here is a new, late addition to my solo show currently hanging at the West End Gallery. It’s 12″ by 16″ on aluminum panel and is titled Pax Terram which loosely translates as Land of Peace.

It’s one of those pieces that are important for me as a means to alleviating my anxiety. The process of creating a harmony in the painting requires a deep focus which stabilizes me. It makes me take a breath and step back from the concerns that sometimes plague me. It’s much like stepping back from the easel while painting to see how things look from a distance.

A benefit of using this process to do such a thing is that when I am done, its calmness inducing effects don’t end. The painting itself continues the work. Looking at Pax Terram affects me in much the same way as the actual process of painting.

It reminds me very much of a favorite Wendell Berry poem, one of this better known works that I have shared here before, titled The Peace of Wild Things. Reading it feels like the stepping back I mentioned above.

A pause and a breath.

This poem has been translated into a choral work that also has placid charms. It’s from composer Jake Runestad and the performance below is from the choral group Conspirare.

Seems like a good way to kick off what looks to be a hectic week.

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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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The Pursuit

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Philosophy, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on July 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- The Pursuit 2021

“The Pursuit“- Now at the West End Gallery

So sweet is the torment
That fills my heart
I can gladly live
With her cruel beauty.
In beauty’s heaven
Vanity increases
And pity gets lost;
But always my faith
Will be a rock against
The wave of pride.

—Si dolce è’l tormento by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

So sweet is the torment…

On the surface in the song from Monteverdi whose first verse’s translation is above, Si dolce è’l tormento (So Sweet Is the Torment), you might think that the torment the singer is expressing is from romantic pursuit alone. And it may be.

But I think it expresses the torment that drives any of us in pursuit of those things that we find meaningful. It could be anything, whatever it is that spurs you forward to search further and further. It might be love or knowledge or fame and fortune.

Anything that gives purpose to your pursuit.

Well, maybe anything but happiness. A lot of us say happiness is what we most desire and there’s nothing wrong with that on its face. Who doesn’t want happiness? But happiness is not an endpoint in itself. It is a byproduct of other things– love, acceptance, respect, and contentment for examples. I am sure you can add many other things to this list that create happiness in you.

But seeking happiness itself is a futile effort, one bound to torment you all your days. It would like existing in a frozen world and pursuing only heat when what you  should be seeking is a means to build a fire to produce the desired heat.

I don’t know what the sailor in the painting at the top is pursuing. I expect it is the light that comes from new knowledge and wisdom but that’s just my own projection into the piece. You might see the subject of the pursuit here in your own light.

As it should be.

Here’s beautiful new performance of the aforementioned Monteverdi piece from one of my favorites, Rhiannon Giddens. Good luck in your pursuits this week.

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Nocte Bleu

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Painting, tagged , , , , , , , on July 11, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Nocte Bleu sm

“Nocte Bleu” – At the West End Gallery

Almost without exception, blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality.

–Wassily Kandinsky

Though the Red Tree and the color red play a large part in my body of work, I am a confessed addict of the color blue. I have written in the past about instances of painting with blue where I almost feel an intoxication after hours of having my face inches from it for several hours at a time. I often have to consciously refrain from using the color at times for fear I will fall into an uncontrollable spiral where all my work is nothing but blue.

That might not be so bad, now that I think about it.

But I do let my addiction off the leash periodically, especially for my shows where there is generally at least a handful of what I would call blue pieces. The piece shown here, Nocte Bleu, is an example. It’s a new 10″ by 20″ painting on aluminum panel that is included in Through the Trees, my annual solo show at the West End Gallery that opens this coming Friday.

I almost felt guilty painting this piece, it gave me such pleasure. And it continued even after the process was done. It was one of those pieces that kept me peeking at it while it was in the studio. Just something in it that satisfied a need within me.

I understand that this doesn’t describe the painting or process or help you understand it in any way. But that’s the way it is with us addicts. Sometimes you just got to have the good stuff, the real blue.

For this Sunday morning music I am going to a favorite piece, a sort of obscure song from jazz horn player Richard Boulger and his 2008 LP Blues Twilight. Blues– see? He knows. The song is Miss Sarah, one that I have played here awhile back. I think it’s a great song to kick off a Sunday morning. Try it on for size.

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Reverie

Posted in Music, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on July 7, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Reverie sm

“Reverie“- Coming to the West End Gallery

There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.

-Washington Irving, A Colloquy in Westminster Abbey

I am not sure if this new painting, Reverie, is the quiet haunt or the air castle here.

Maybe both.

It certainly has the feel and atmosphere of a daydream to me or maybe a meditative state. It has a sense of calm stillness that is often a goal for me in my work– and in my mind.

I would write more but I am in the final hours of preparation of work for my upcoming show before delivering it to the West End Gallery tomorrow so that the gallery can be hung and ready before next Friday’s opening. As much as I would like nothing more than to spend an hour lost in Reverie, there is still much more for me to do.

So, in lieu of writing I will let a piece of music do the talking, one whose title I poached for this painting. The piece of music, Reverie, is from composer Claude Debussy and is performed here by the pianist Lang Lang. For those of you not familiar with Lang Lang, he is a rock star among the classical set.

While a child of three in China, his first exposure to western classical music came in the form of Tom and Jerry cartoon that featured Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody. It set his future in motion. Trained at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Lang Lang became one of the most celebrated classical musicians of this generation.

I like his playing here. It definitely sets the scene for a short reverie before I get to work.

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The 4th/Pink Houses

Posted in Music, Painting, tagged , on July 4, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- The Deacon's New Tie 1995

GC Myers- The Deacon’s New Tie 1995

Another Fourth of July here in America.

No big celebration planned for us today. I am still swamped with work as I try to finish up my next show at the West End Gallery, which I deliver later this week. I’ll be framing and and sanding and varnishing this Independence Day.

No complaints though. It’s just part of my American Dream.

And maybe that’s the idea behind this day, that we should all be entitled to pursue our own American Dream. That whoever we are and wherever we’re from, no matter the color of our skin, our religion or sexual orientation, that we are free to create our own life story with equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity and reward. 

Free to create as big or small a life as one desires. 

That doesn’t seem like too much to ask, does it?

Unfortunately, that which seems so simple is often the hardest to accomplish. I certainly don’t think we have ever really reached this ideal state. It feels like an impossibility on some days with all the ignorance and hatred so proudly shown by so many these days. But so long as we aspire to that ideal and ward off all attempts to divert us from it, there remains hope.

Here’s my Sunday morning musical selection, July 4th edition. It’s the acoustic version of Pink Houses from John Mellencamp. I’ve always had a soft spot for this song and think he does a great job in portraying that ideal that I spoke of above, that the American Dream comes in all sizes. I particularly like this acoustic version.

The image I chose for today, The Deacon’s New Tie, from way back in 1995. The Deacon was part of my Exiles series and is permanently linked in my mind with this song mainly because several months after painting this piece I came across an article in the paper. It was about a 95 year-old man in central Florida who had won a case where he was trying to be forced from the land on which he had lived for nearly 70 years so that a highway project could proceed.

There was a picture of a bald old black man sitting on his veranda, a slight smile on his lips. There was something slightly familiar in that face, something that caused me take a second look. There it was: he was the spitting image of my deacon. The article went on to say that he was a longtime member of a local church and was known to friends and neighbors as the Deacon. 

The beginning of this song always brings that image of the Deacon sitting on his front porch with the interstate running through his front yard, thinking that he has it pretty good. Living out his American Dream.

Have a good 4th. Hope you’re living your American Dream.

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Freedom

Posted in Music, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on June 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GCMyers-- La Bella Vita sm

“La Bella Vita”– Now at the Principle Gallery-16″ x 40″ on canvas

You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

Came across this new song from Jon Batiste yesterday and immediately knew that I would be using it this week’s Sunday morning music. It’s called Freedom and it celebrates the joy that comes in movement and dance.

Myself, I’m way too self-conscious to be a dancer but I certainly recognize the joy found in it in others, those who dance without any self-consciousness or restraint. But while I may envy them, I also take a little of their joy and freedom for myself.

There’s an infectious quality to that kind of freedom of expression. The good kind of infectious.

Give a listen. It might make you feel like getting up and moving a little. And that’s always a good thing.

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Dropping Clues/ Dolphins

Posted in Event, Music, tagged , , , , , , , on June 6, 2021| 2 Comments »

GC Myers-Dropping Clues 2021

There is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty.

― Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, 1848

We all have questions and we all want answers, don’t we? For many of us, it’s just the nature of who and what we are, this need to figure out the mystery of all things. As a result, we sometimes see clues in the mundane and the innocuous.

The color of the sky. The patterns of the stars. The way the light shifts and filters through the trees. The moon’s path and its effect on things here. The way a path winds.

Answers seldom, if ever, come.

Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we need this mystery hanging in front of us like a carrot tempting a mule. We might be even more dangerous to ourselves, if that’s possible, if we definitively knew our origins, our true limits and possibilities. I sometimes think we all have a bit of nihilism tucked away in our genetic codes, one that wants us to burn down the whole shooting match once truth is revealed and there’s no longer any way of wrapping reality in mystery and supposition.

Who knows?

Not me, surely. I am just here for the mystery. Plus, I heard there’d be cake.

Anyway, those are some thoughts inspired by the new painting shown at the top, Dropping Clues, part of my solo show now hanging at the Principle Gallery. I thought this was also match up with an old song from a late singer/songwriter that many of you probably don’t know, Fred Neil. Neil was a highly regarded folk singer in the 1960’s, one of the bigger stars of NYC’s Village folk scene. He is best know for his song, Everybody’s Talkin’, made popular in the film Midnight Cowboy as sung by Harry Nilsson. Most people, myself included, assumed Nilsson wrote the song but it was Fred Neil.

His other popular song is the one I am sharing today, Dolphins. It’s a moody musing on our existence that, in part, reflected Neil’s own fascination with dolphins. He became interested with dolphins in the 60’s and in 1970 was one of the founders of the Dolphin Research Project. From that point on, his life was more or less devoted to watching dolphins. He performed his music only occasionally through the last thirty years of his life, until his death in 2001 at age 65.

This song has been covered by a host of notable performers and has been used in many soundtracks for movies and television. It’s a good song to have on when you’re trying to figure out the mystery.

M

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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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Song of Joy

Posted in Event, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on June 2, 2021| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Song of Joy 2021

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

― Rabindranath Tagore

Titled Song of Joy, this 18″ by 24″ painting on masonite panel is included in my annual solo exhibit Between Here and There, opening Friday, June 4, at the Principle Gallery.

This piece really struck me in a powerful way while it was in the studio. There is something in the brightness and clarity of the colors that just feels joyful to me. And the orange sun rising adds a sense of forward-looking hope to this joy. Even the shapes of the rich green forms in the foreground had a happy, joyful feeling.

It might be one of the more optimistic paintings I have done in some time. There is a positivity that I think reflects the thought above from the great Nobel Prize winning poet/writer Rabindranath Tagore. There is real joy to be found in the recognition that we are all filled from the same stream of life, that the lifeforce of all living things and the atoms of which we are all comprised are from that stream.

This sense of unity, this joyfulness in simply being, also makes the natural sorrows of this world, the inescapable realities of our lifetimes, somewhat easier to absorb. It is, after all, simply part of the stream’s flow. And for all of the joy and brightness of this painting, it has an underlying darkness showing through.

By its very nature, it is brightness built on darkness. It’s something I always want and seek in my work, this sense of visible darkness which contrasts and heightens the light.

Joy in life despite the its hardships.

And in this painting, that is the source of the Red Tree’s Song of Joy.

Here’s a song that sort of expresses this type of joy. It’s Feelin’ Good Again from Robert Earl Keen. It’s a favorite song that I’ve played it here before. It always reminds me of my dad and his bar buddies, many who he had known most of his life. I remember stopping at the bar with him on a number of times on Saturday mornings, a quick pitstop on the way to the horse track, and how all these guys would be so happy in seeing one another, laughing and shouting. It might have been as close to real joy as I ever saw in my dad. This song always feels like it’s a song of joy he would understand.

9921063 Song of Joy Catalog page

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