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Archive for the ‘Painting’ Category

Dan Boone’s Elbow Room

Posted in Painting, Poetry, tagged , , on August 24, 2021| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Elbow Room sm

“Elbow Room“- Currently at the West End Gallery

Alone he trod the shadowed trails;
But he was lord of a thousand vales
As he roved Kentucky, far and near,
Hunting the buffalo, elk, and deer.
What joy to see, what joy to win
So fair a land for his kith and kin,
Of streams unstained and woods unhewn!
” Elbow room! ” laughed Daniel Boone.

–Arthur Guiterman, Daniel Boone

“Elbow room!” cried Daniel Boone. 

This phrase always comes to my mind whenever the name of Daniel Boone or the phrase elbow room comes up.

This doesn’t come about often but it happens.

I think I must have read or heard the poem from Arthur Guiterman, whose verse is shown above, as kid. Guiterman (1871-1943) was an American poet who wrote mainly humorous verse that often dealt with those things that are lost in the rush of modern progress.

Things like elbow room.

For example, here’s his On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness:

The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls.

The sword of Charlemagne the Just
Is ferric oxide, known as rust.

The grizzly bear whose potent hug
Was feared by all, is now a rug.

Great Caesar’s bust is on my shelf,
And I don’t feel so well myself.

I think knowing the Daniel Boone poem from an early age ingrained the idea of elbow room in me, that desire for wide open spaces or forests free from the encroachment of people. It certainly shows up in my work, even in the title of piece at the top. I know when I was considering a title for this painting after it was completed, that line “Elbow room!” cried Daniel Boone immediately entered my thoughts.

I don’t want to get into the reality or the myth of Daniel Boone this morning. I don’t know or care if he killed a b’ar (that’s bear, for those of you who didn’t know the old TV series and song) when he was just three though I kind of think that this particular claim might be bordering on myth. I just bring him up for his place in this poem and the idea of elbow room.

He and I share an affinity for that.

I will end with the last lines of the final verse of Guiterman’s poem on the man. In the afterlife, this poem has him frolicking among the heavens in what feels like a weird sci-fi scenario, one that made me laugh out loud when I read this poem again for the first time in probably 50 years:

He makes his camp on heights untrod,
The steps of the shrine, alone with God.
Through the woods of the vast, on the plains of space
He hunts the pride of the mammoth race
And the dinosaur of the triple horn,
The manticore and the unicorn,
As once by the broad Missouri’s flow
He followed the elk and the buffalo.
East of the sun and west of the moon,
” Elbow room! ” laughs Daniel Boone.

Old Dan Boone out hunting unicorn on the plains of outer space.

Strange and a little politically incorrect? Yeah. But that’s what you get when you mix together myth, reality and a little elbow room.

” Elbow room! ” laughs Daniel Boone.

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In Cool Air/ No Road

Posted in Painting, Poetry, tagged , , , , on July 29, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- In Cool Air rev sm

“In Cool Air“– Now at the West End Gallery

Drafting a world where no such road will run
From you to me;
To watch that world come up like a cold sun,
Rewarding others, is my liberty.
Not to prevent it is my will’s fulfillment.
Willing it, my ailment.

— No Road, Philip Larkin

There’s a lot to do this morning plus my computer is a little glitchy this morning so I won’t say much. I thought I’d pair the small piece above from my current West End Gallery show, In Cool Air, with a reading by Tom O’Bedlam of No Road from poet Philip Larkin. Not sure that they fully mesh in terms of tone and message but I am a sucker for Larkin’s verse with its sometimes cynical and slightly misanthropic viewpoint.

I especially like the final stanza shown above. There’s something to it that I can somewhat equate with what I do.

Or not. Who knows, really?

All I know that on a busy morning, these lines and this small painting felt like a small respite.

Good enough for me.

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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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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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New World Passage

Posted in Event, Painting, Process, Quote, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on July 14, 2021| Leave a Comment »

"New World Passage"-- At the West End Gallery

We don’t receive wisdom we must discover it for ourselves.

― Marcel Proust

This painting, New World Passage, was one of those paintings that started as an idea quite some time ago. Late last autumn, in fact.

It was started with forest trees and dark rolls of land that dominate the foreground, creating almost a fence through which one would look forward. I loved the first efforts on it with the rich blues and magenta having a gemlike feel. The process at that point was all about painting the negative space, trying to balance colors and forms in the narrow slots between the trees to create something more than mere background.

It was at this stage that I ran out of steam. Actually, it was more fear than fatigue. I felt this was a deserving piece, one that was filled with some great unknown and still unseen potential at that point. I just didn’t feel up to moving forward on it out of the fear that my desire to see it finished would cause me to be hasty in my decisions which could easily drain it of all possibility.

It could sink dully back to earth instead of following the life arc I imagined for it. My thinking was that by not trying to finish it, its potential would always be there. Unfulfilled, of course. But there.

So, it sat for months and months. I kept telling myself that I would just finish it one of these days  and would count it among the pieces allotted for my annual show at the Principle Gallery. I missed that deadline, putting it off and saying that it was okay, I would just move it to the West End show. But as the months passed and the West End Gallery show came into form, this painting still sat unfinished in the studio. Its presence was almost aggravating because it served as a reminder of my cowardice and uncertainty.

It taunted me up until the final day that I had allotted for painting before moving on to final touches and framing for this show. I felt time constrained and anxious but made the decision that on that day, this painting would either live or die. I still wasn’t sure where it was going behind that fence line of trees but I dove in.

At first, the small amount of sky was going to be pale to let the deep tones shine off of the lighter background. But after doing a bit, I hated the look. It actually felt like it was sapping away the vibrance of the trees’ colors. I amped up the color, going to the Indian Yellow with hints of red and orange through it that has been my friend and companion for decades now. 

It felt right. It pushed the blues and purples and magentas up further. I added the house as destination, an end point to which the path headed.

Then I added the sun.

I wanted it there as compositional balance but the pale light one that I began with did nothing for the painting. It made the whole thing, even with the vibrant colors, feel bland. I wanted something that made it feel like this was path leading to something unknown, a trail to a strange new place.

Thus, the red sun.

It felt right immediately. No warming up to its presence was needed. It made everything come together. It felt like passing through the common known– just a few trees, fields and hills– to suddenly find yourself in a world you don’t completely recognize or understand. It looks familiar but it feels different., like you are sensing things at a higher level of awareness or comprehension.

I liked it. I liked it a lot. It has the life I had felt it might possess. I was glad that I waited because I don’t think this end point was yet there when I first thought about finishing it. It– and I– wasn’t ready to move on to a new world yet.

New World Passage is an 18″ by 24″ painting on panel that is part of Through the Trees, my new solo exhibit at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. The show opens this Friday, July 16, with an opening reception from 4-7 PM but you can see it beforehand. 

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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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Dispersing Darkness

Posted in Painting, Philosophy, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on July 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »

9921042 Dispersing Darkness sm

“Dispersing Darkness“- At West End Gallery

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

― Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

Well, the show is out at the West End Gallery and will be fully hung today well in advance of next Friday’s opening reception, which runs from 4-7 PM.

There is, as always, a sense of relief in having the show out of the studio but this relief is forever accompanied by a feeling of anxiety in how the work might be perceived.

I know what I see in the work, what feelings and meanings I derive from it. It is created to satisfy and reflect my emotional needs. But how others experience it is always a crapshoot because one never knows what others are seeing of themselves in the work or what they desire to see.

Some folks want things I cannot offer and I have always been okay with that. I do what I do and put it out there, warts and all.

Some folks want nothing but optimism and light. While I understand this desire and attempt to keep my work optimistic and forward looking, I have always embraced a darker undertone in my work. I think it’s because I believe we are all delicately balanced between the opposing forces of dark and light.

The world is also balanced in this way in my opinion. It’s in that area of equilibrium between the two forces that harmony and beauty appear.

I think this is what I am seeing in the new painting above, Dispersing Darkness. We sometimes get out of balance and darkness becomes dominant. The key at these moments comes in knowing that this is only a temporary condition and  patiently waiting it out until light once more comes to push away the excess darkness.

Like the crow on the peak of the roof in this piece.

I see this piece in an optimistic, hopeful way but, as always, that is just my take. You will see what you need to see in it, no doubt.

As it should be.

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Gifts

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , , , on July 6, 2021| 3 Comments »

9921076 To the Limit sm

“To the Limit“- Part of the upcoming West End Gallery show

The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.

— Dr. David Viscott

I wasn’t going to write about this today but I came across a tweet yesterday from a well known law professor who I highly respect using the quote above. Well, he used the shorter version– The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away— which cuts out the developmental stage in the middle.

All fine and dandy. However, he attributed it to Pablo Picasso. Things immediately stirred my interest because I like Picasso and he has actually said some very noteworthy things that end up as oft used quotations. But this just didn’t sound right.

So, off to Quote Investigator and, sure enough, there it was. No evidence of Picasso ever saying this nor Billy Shakespeare — I can call him that as we go way back– who is also often given credit for this quip.

No, it turns out that the first evidence in print came from a radio/TV psychiatrist who was very popular in the 1980’s and early 90’s, Dr. David Viscott. He died in 1996 at the age of 58. I don’t really remember him but he was pretty well known  for his fast diagnoses of callers problems and his in depth discussions on the required pharmacology. He even entered popular culture with his voice being the inspiration for the cartoon psychiatrist Dr. Marvin Monroe, who appeared regularly on the first seven seasons of The Simpsons. 

The earliest mention of the same sort of sentiment but in different, more specific words comes from an 1843 essay titled Gifts from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a stone; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.

Perhaps Emerson was the David Viscott or Dr. Marvin Monroe of his era? His advice is very much the same though it is a bit dated with females, half the population, being relegated to sewing handkerchiefs. Thankfully, today females populate every field of endeavor and can do much more than sew hankies. I don’t want to offend any hankie sewers out there but how many hankies do we really need?

But the idea of giving of yourself, to share what you do best with those you love as well as the rest of the world, is the idea here. The idea that thought, effort, and time have went into a gift make them all the more precious. Even now, as I sit here, I have several gifts within sight that have been given to me over the years. Each is precious to me for just those reasons.

The tragedy is that so many of us never find that gift or overlook it when it is right in front us. Or even more tragically, that for whatever reasons, we never try to follow the hints to our gift that we do recognize. 

So, now that we’ve cleared up the origins of the advice at the top, get out there and do something that you love and share it with friends or family or the rest of the world.

It’ll make your day as well as that of someone else.

The painting at the top, To the Limit, is a new piece that is included in my upcoming show, Through the Trees, that opens next Friday, July 16th, at the West End Gallery in Corning. I used this painting for this post because the blowing tree often represents for me self-sacrifice and the giving of all to an effort. I guess that would make for a splendid gift.

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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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