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To the Watchtower

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on June 6, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- To the Watchtower smI’m a little tired, mainly of talking about my work and myself, and want to keep this short today.  I thought I’d show another painting from the show at the Principle Gallery and couple it with the song that spawned it.  The painting above is titled To the Watchtower  which I derived from the old Bob Dylan song All Along the Watchtower.

I thought it might serve as a good metaphor for what will be my final plea for your help in our efforts to raise funds for the Soarway Foundation, a campaign that ends today.  By donating, you can possibly win a painting of mine but the more important thing is that you are reaching out to those in need, people who don’t expect your help, don’t feel entitled to it but desperately need it.

Like the Red Tree in the painting, we often place ourselves on islands, seemingly insulated from the rest of the world and hopefully immune to the ills and woes of it.  I openly acknowledge that I am prone to this.  But we are not islands.  We are connected to the world.  It’s knowing that we are part of a greater whole that is the basis for the empathy that keeps this world together.  So, even while we try to stay put on our island we must man that watchtower and stay vigilant to the suffering of others.

Reach out.  Help someone.  Maybe you don’t give a tinker’s damn about people on the other side of the globe.  So be it.  Then help someone in your neighborhood. Your town. Your country.

Just help someone…

But I am asking for your help today by going to the link at the bottom.  If you can or if you already have, I thank you mightily.  If not, like I say, help someone else.

Reach out.

Thanks.  Here’s the classic Jimi Hendrix version of Dylan’s song.

https://www.crowdrise.com/artists-engaging-nepal
 

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Afterthoughts

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 5, 2016| Leave a Comment »

2016 Principle Gallery Wall shot aHad a very nice visit in Alexandria.  On Friday the weather always seemed on the verge of a huge thunderstorm, which had me a little apprehensive– even more than I normally be on the day of a show– about prospects for the opening reception of this year’s show, Part of the Pattern,  at the Principle Gallery on that evening.  However the storm never really hit with much force and the reception turned out well.

It was a really nice evening with a great crowd that kept me completely engaged throughout.  It was good catching up with folks who have been coming to the shows for many years now as well as greeting many new faces.  I can’t say “Thank You” enough to those who were able to come out on Friday and to our friends at the Principle Gallery–Michele, Clint, Pam, Haley, Pierre and Megan— who made it all possible. Oh, and special thanks to my canine friends at the gallery, Asher and Chase.

Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali and Bill Russell

Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali and Bill Russell

Word came out during our time there that Muhammad Ali had passed away.  Ali was a huge hero of mine when I was a child, part of what I consider the Holy Quartet of Heroes– Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Bill Russell and Bob Gibson– who had much in common.  They were all dominant legends in their respective sports, the greatest winners of their times.

They were all strong and smart black men who were not afraid to go against the grain, to take a stand outside the world world of sports and say things that were not always popular nor politically correct.  They seemed to understand that that their sports were secondary to the state of the world.  They all transcended their sports and became cultural heroes and symbols, something more than mere performers on the athletic stage.

Ali was certainly a standout in that last category.  He was arguably the most widely recognized person on earth, a sports figure whose image was widely known throughout the world  decades after his time as an athlete had ended.  I remember reading, I think it was in Wilfrid Sheed‘s biography of Ali, about Ali’s picture hanging in mud huts in Africa.

He was so  much more than a boxer.   I have a hard time watching boxing today but I watched a lot of it when I was a kid and it was mainly because of Ali.  It was no less brutal a sport then but Ali made it seem like there was an air of poetry and gracefulness in it.  In my mind, I can still see his seemingly effortless movements around the ring, dancing lightly on the toes of his white shoes around plodding opponents.  It was a thing of beauty to see this big man move like he was being carried by the breeze as the other man would dive at him, often flailing away at a target that was there then gone in a flash.

He was the rarest of birds.  Style and substance.

Sorry to see him go.

Well, this song doesn’t have a lot to say about Ali but it is about a boxer and it is a beautiful song.  Below is a version of the great Simon and Garfunkel song as perfomed by Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin and dobro-master Jerry Douglas.

Thanks for stopping in today and have a great Sunday.

PS:  TODAY IS THE LAST FULL DAY — this event ends MONDAY, June 6, promptly at 12 noon–to take part in the event to raise funds for the Soarway Foundation‘s efforts in Nepal.   Your donation, which will help immensely, also gets you a chance at winning a painting of mine valued at $5000 plus a signed poster.  What more can you ask?  You get the pleasure from helping others, a tax deduction and a chance to win something fairly valuable.

https://www.crowdrise.com/artists-engaging-nepal

 

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Oops!- Pick Yourself Up

Posted in Music, tagged , , , on May 22, 2016| 3 Comments »

logo

Soarway Foundation Logo

Yesterday’s roll-out of the fundraiser for the Soarway Foundation‘s work for the recovery of Nepal seemed to be going along smoothly when we hit a snag.  Apparently there was a problem with the the site.  Although live and working,it was not yet ready from a legal standpoint.  The rules for donating had not yet been posted  and this legality (and there are a lot of them!) made any donations made ineligible for the drawing for the painting.

So Crowdrise, who is the administrator for the event, determined that it would be best to hit reset, refund any donations immediately and start all over again.  The event will reopen within a few days once they have all the loose ends tied up so that everything is square with the law.  We let you know when it goes live and kick off the whole thing again at that point.

You always wants things to go off without a hitch but sometimes that just isn’t possible so you make the best of the situation.  So, we’ll consider this a dry run, a rehearsal for real thing to come.

Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience and my heartfelt thank you’s for those of you who took time  and generously made the effort to participate.  I hope you’ll return in a few days because it’s a cause where I believe that the funds raised can make a huge and immediate impact.  It is basically a volunteer organization  which means that every donation can make some sort of difference for  the people who truly need this help.

Please take some time and go the Soarway Foundation’s site and read about their efforts.  As I said, this is the first of their efforts that will feature wonderful artists from Nepal, Uganda and here in the United States.  In fact, if you are an artist and would like to participate in some way, please let Scott DeLisi know through the contact info on the site–it’s right at the top of the page.

I guess today’s Sunday morning music should reflect what happened yesterday so I chose the Diana Krall version of the classic standard Pick Yourself Up.  Good advice for any day.  Have a great Sunday and I hope to hear from you all when we go live with the fundraiser later this week!

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Ascending Bird

Posted in History, Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 15, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Ascending BirdI’ve been looking for a title for this new painting, an 18″ by 18″ canvas, for a week or so now.  A lot of things come to mind and I thought I had it for a while.  Then I was listening to some music and one of the songs just hit me.

It was Ascending Bird, a traditional Persian folk melody, played by the Silk Road Ensemble which is a large and loosely knit group ofmusicians, including the great Yo-Yo Ma, who hail from along that fabled route and play many of the traditional instruments. The Silk Road was the network of  ancient routes that traders used in linking the East and West over the centuries, from China through the Middle East to the Mediterranean. Both goods and ideas moved along the Silk Road.

This song is the Persian version of the Phoenix myth, of a bird who flies higher and higher toward the sun until it is engulfed in flames.  It then rises from the ashes as a new creature.

And that’s kind of how I see this painting.  The paths moving from dark to light signify a transformative journey and the Red Tree appears as a Phoenix-like figure emerging from a hillock bursting from a treed hillside.  The Red Tree almost seems to ready to take flight.  I see it as a moment of realization and redefinition.

Here is the Silk Road Ensemble with Y0-Yo Ma performing Ascending Bird.  The version here is a shorter one but has the dynamic punch that struck me.  You can hear a longer version here. Give a listen and have a great Sunday.

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Highest Ground

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on May 12, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Highest GroundI’m so glad that he let me try it again
‘Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I’m so glad that I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin’
Till I reach my highest ground

— Stevie Wonder, Higher Ground

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

Another new painting headed for my show, Part of the Pattern, which opens June 3 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.  This piece is 8″ by 14″ on paper and is titled Highest Ground, borrowed from the chorus of the great Stevie Wonder song.

This is an easy piece to absorb at first take with its mix of deep warm and cool colors and simplified composition.  But despite that, there’s a lot of going on in this piece. It both feels soothing as though it represents a sort of safe haven but it raises questions.  If this is a safe haven, what is it safe from? Is this an end of the world scenario?  There’s a boat but nobody seems to be present– where are they?

And the ladder is a new element here.  I see it as a symbol of a continual upward climb toward some sort of final personal fulfillment.  A spiritual endpoint.  As the song says– gonna keep on tryin’/ Till I reach my highest ground.

 Here’s Stevie Wonder’s song to help me along as I continue to look at this piece for a while.

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Be Cheerful, Live Your Life

Posted in Music, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , , , , , on May 9, 2016| 2 Comments »

2200-year-old-Antakya TurkeyMosaics 2Be Cheerful, Live your life– that is the translation of the words on this mosaic.

Archaeologists recently uncovered this wonderful mosaic floor with those words in Antakya, formerly the Greek-Roman city of Antiocheia, in Turkey that dates back over 2200 years, back to the third century BC.  This is an area that is famous for the discovery of a multitude of floor mosaics that once decorated the homes of the upper crust of society.

This particular mosaic feature three panels with the final panel being a reclining skeleton with bread and wine just chilling out.  The central panel shows a man with butler in tow heading anxiously toward his evening bath which was a communal event at the time.  9 PM was the time for bathing and to be late was frowned upon which  he obviously is as he is pointing to a sundial which indicates the time as being between 9 and 10 PM.  The first panel, which is damaged, is thought to have a figure throwing fire which is symbolic of the preparation for a bath.

But it’s the skeleton with it’s message that kind of lines up with Bobby McFerrin‘s song from a number of years back, Don’t Worry Be Happy, that catches our modern eye.  I think we don’t give the people from the past,  both from the near past and the very distant past, with having  a sophisticated view of life or sense of humor.  To see something like this gives us a closer connection to how they saw their own world as well as allowing us to see that they were not so different than us even though 2200 years separate us.

So, if you’re fretting on this Monday, hurrying around to beat the clock (or sundial), just remember that partying skeleton and heed its advice–Be cheerful and live your life.  If you need an accompanying beat to start the week off on the right foot, there’s little dose of the Booby McFerrin song at the bottom.

2200-year-old-Antakya Turkey Mosaics 1

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You Don’t Know Me

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, tagged , , , , on May 8, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- A Hard PastIt’s Mother’s Day again. You might think the image I am showing today is an odd selection for this day. It’s a small painting called A Hard Past that is from my 2008 Outlaws series.  It’s one of a few pieces that I deeply regret ever letting go as it holds personal meaning for me.  I just didn’t realize this at the time.

I know that this may not seem like a flattering thing to say but every time I look at this image I see my Mom’s face.  At least,  a certain look she had when she was sitting by herself in silence at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea and smoking her ever-present Camel cigarettes, those unfiltered beauties that no doubt contributed to the lung cancer that took her life at age 63.

She would sit in stillness for a long period time at that table with a distant and hardened gaze on her face.  I always wondered what she was thinking or where she was in that moment.  But when you’re a kid you just move through the kitchen without a word or a question.

More’s the pity…

The title, A Hard Past, came from this memory of her.  She had a pretty hard life- her mother died when she was three,  no school beyond ninth grade, years of toiling in a factory and a long, turbulent and angry marriage to my father.  It gave her a hard edge, a toughness that several people commented on after her death back in 1995.  But they also commented on her humor, generosity and willingness to help others who might need a hand– those qualities that I also saw in her.  Those qualities that I so miss.

So while it may not seem like a flattering tribute, just seeing my Mom in this piece means so much to me.

For today’s music, I’m going with her favorite, Eddy Arnold, and a song that she probably felt fit her like a glove, You Don’t Know Me.  It’s a classic song that Arnold is credited with co-writing along with songwriter Cindy Walker in 1955.

Have  great Mother’s Day…

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It’s My Way

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Pacifica smEvery spring the Library of Congress selects 25 recordings that they deem to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” to be added to their National Recording Registry.  There is a wide selection each year with recordings from all genres of music combined with radio broadcasts. speeches and other spoken word recordings.

For example,this year includes General Marshall‘s 1947 speech at Harvard where he laid out the basis for the Marshall Plan alongside George Carlin’s seminal Class Clown comedy album.  Plus for sports lovers, there’s the recording of the broadcast of the fourth quarter of the historic 1962 game in which Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points.

There are a lot of things from the list that I could use for this Sunday morning music selection.  There are two versions of Mack the Knife, one from Louis Armstrong and the other from Bobby Darin.  There’s Where Did Our Love Go? from the Supremes, Piano Man from Billy Joel, Cry Me a River from Julie London and too many others to list this early in the morning.  You can see the whole list here.

But the selection that caught my eye was the 1964 debut album, It’s My Way,  from folk singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie.  If you are of a certain age, you probably remember Buffy Sainte-Marie when she was one of the stars of the folk revival of the 1960’s.  Her Cree Indian heritage and the fact she was one of the few women songwriters in the genre at the time made her stand out and she was staple of variety television shows of the era.  But her profile was less visible going into the 1970’s and she had a 16 year hiatus from recording from the mid 70’s until 1992 although she was still busy as a songwriter.  The song Up Where We Belong which she co-wrote was a huge hit for Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes as well as winning the Academy Award for Best Song in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman.

This 1964 album is a pretty remarkable recording and there are a number of her songs from it which I could have chosen to play.  Universal Soldier became a standard as a 1960’s protest song and Cod’ine was covered by dozens of artists, most famously Janis Joplin.  But it is the title track that stands out for me.  It’s a song that seems timeless in its sound, not trapped in its own time like some songs from  significant eras.  It’s a powerful song that builds and builds.

Give a listen to It’s My Way and have a great Sunday.

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I Want to Take You Higher

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , on April 24, 2016| Leave a Comment »

PurpleIn the last few months we lost two of the most unique and transcendent musicians of our time, David Bowie in January and now Prince.  Luckily for us, both had long and prolific careers and left large musical legacies behind.  I admired Prince greatly and I think that is all there is to say, especially after the millions of words written and spoken over the past few days.  I don’t think I can stand to see another tweet on one of the news channels form some celebrity saying that this is how it sounds when doves cry.

So, instead of trying to dig up some Prince that you might not have heard in the last few days, I thought for this Sunday morning music I would go in another direction and play someone who was one of Prince’s early influences, Sly and the Family Stone.  It’s his performance of I Want to Take You Higher at Woodstock in 1969. I’ve played this clip here before but I am going to play it again just because I think it is a great performance and a great piece of film.  I think you can see how Prince took elements of Sly’s work and made it into something distinctly his own.  That synthesis is part of artistry.

Have a great Sunday.

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Long Day’s Journey Into NYC

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Theater, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 17, 2016| 1 Comment »

Took a day or two to shoot into NYC.  We packed a lot into a very short time and quickly fled the throngs that packed the streets and parks of the city. Hit and run.

Neue Galerie - Gustav Klimt Portait of Adele Bloch-BauerWe first ran up through Central Park  to the Neue Galerie, a small museum just above the Metroplitan Museum that features German and Austrian Modern art.  It’s a beautiful collection situated in a beautiful 5th Avenue mansion which makes for intimate, if sometimes crowded, viewing of the art.  If you’re in NYC, the Neue Galerie is worth a visit if only to see this piece even though there is much, much more to see there.

It has a memorable group of Germanic paintings and drawings from the likes of Klimt, Schiele, Kirchner, Beckman and many others.  But undoubtedly, the crown jewel of their collection is the  Portrait of Adele-Bloch Bauer by artist Gustav Klimt, the $135 million masterpiece with the fabled past that spawned last year’s film, Woman in Gold.

The lighting in the room with this painting is a flat and even light that dampens the gold’s glimmer, making it less shimmering than you may have seen it in photos.  But even that can’t diminish this stunning piece which is evidenced by the flocks of people that surround it, a long with a docent who monopolized the piece for about 30 minutes.

That was all the time we had for museum hopping and it was on to the theater.  We were meeting our neighbor and friend Bill’s English class from our local high school the next day for a matinee of the Eugene O’Neill landmark drama Long Day’s Journey into Night so we figured that we needed something a bit less weighty and dark to counter the dose of O’Neill that was to come.  We hit the musical  Something Rotten which tells the story of two playwright brothers struggling to outdo William Shakespeare, who is wonderfully portrayed by Tony-winner Christian Borle as a rockstar who is idolized by the masses in Elizabethan England.

Very high energy, very funny and a really great cast.

The next day’s performance continued that theme, if you substitute the word dark for funny.  The revival of O’Neill’s biographical masterpiece features a tremendous cast with Jessica Lange, Gabriel Byrne, Michael Shannon and John Gallagher, Jr. and they did not disappoint in any way.  You could sense their total engagement with the material which is really needed for a production that runs over 3 1/2 hours and features very dark and probing dialogue between the small cast.  In lesser hands, it could be a tortuous 3 1/2 hours but they made the time pass easily for the viewer.  Great, great show.

Bill’s students seemed to understand the significance of what they were seeing which is a great thing to witness.  Many kudos to Bill for exposing these kids to this part of the world.  And if you get a chance and like the idea of seeing great actors doing great material, check out this show before it ends its short run at the end of June.

All in all, a good couple of days in the city.  That being said, there is nothing better than that time approaching home when the traffic that snarls the city has fallen away and all you can see ahead of you is a single pair of taillights far in the distance and the outline of darkened hills set against the clear night sky.  No crowds, no traffic, no noise– home is near.

Okay, for this Sunday’s music, here is a little sample from Something Rotten.  It is the real theme of the whole show.  It’s God, I Hate Shakespeare sung by Brain d’Arcy James.

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