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Archive for the ‘Painting’ Category

Shadowland

Posted in Painting, Personal Mythology on February 1, 2017| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Shadowland 2003This painting, a 24″ by 20″ canvas is titled Shadowland. It’s from back in 2003 and has been living with me for almost all of the time since, floating from wall to wall in the studio. It’s been with me for so long that it sometimes go unnoticed and unappreciated for long periods of time.  But sometimes I find myself stopping as I am passing it with some other thought in mind.

There are times when I’ll look at it and think, almost dismissively,”It’s just too simple.”

But there are moments like this morning when I find myself completely swallowed by the scene, as though the simplicity of the composition were drawing me close so that it could envelope me in its warm tones.

In those moments, I am entranced, embraced in a colorful atmosphere that surrounds me like a blanket. I am safe. The anger, the anxieties and the cares of the physical world are kept at bay for a moment.

A brief but glorious moment.

And those few seconds give me hope and fill me with energy.

And I find myself wondering how that emotion, that feeling, was hidden in such a simple thing.  And I am gladdened that there is that mystery, that it is so far beyond me.  I need that mystery, that wonder.

It means that my work is still ahead of me.  My task.

And I say, “It’s just too simple.”

But I am not being dismissive this time.

 

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Schedule (So Far)

Posted in Painting, tagged , , , , on January 31, 2017| 2 Comments »

9917104-blue-etude-smThis is a new painting, a 4″ by 4″ piece on paper, called Blue Etude.  It’s part of a small group of new work that is included in the Little Gems show that opens this Friday at the West End Gallery.  Twenty two years ago, I showed my work in public for the first time at the Little Gems show. Since that time it has come to be the kick off point for my work year, as it is this year.  It is always one of my favorite shows.

After the Little Gems my next show is my annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.  This year’s show open on Friday, June 2.  This exhibit will be my 18th consecutive show at the Principle, going back to my 2000 show, Redtree, one that marked the real beginning of my now signature Red Tree.  My life would be much different without that show.

This is also an important show for me because it requires so much effort and focus, it sets the tone and determines the course for  my entire year.  It is also the show that normally unveils any new directions for my work.

This year’s show is titled Truth & Belief.  These two concepts have been in my thoughts for some time now and I find myself trying to find bits of each in my paintings as I work on them.  While I hope truth and belief are forever intertwined as one, it is now painfully evident that this is not always the case.

It’s that difference between the two concepts that hopefully will create the tension, the darkness beneath the light in my work.

My annual show at the West End Gallery opens Friday, July 14.  I have to double-check, but I believe this will be my 50th solo show— obviously not all at the West End! But there have been very many there and, as my de facto home gallery, it is always a very important exhibit for me.  You always want to do well in front of your hometown crowd.

This year’s show at the West End is titled Self Preservation.  More on that in the future!

I currently have two Gallery Talks scheduled. I have come to look upon them as some of the highlights of my year.  I like the challenge of them and the fact that they often are just a lot of fun.

This year’s Gallery Talks are:

*West End Gallery on Saturday, August 5.

 *Principle Gallery on Saturday, September 16.

There are some other things coming.  For example, my work is featured in an article in the Summer edition of Acrylic Artist Magazine. Plus, there are a few other things in the works.

And, as is normal, my work will be regularly on display at the galleries that represent me during those times when I don’t have a show hanging.

I guess I better get to work.

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Hard Freedom

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on January 18, 2017| 7 Comments »

GC Myers- Real FreedomI am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

—Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966

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How do you define freedom?

It’s a word that’s thrown around and owned by groups of every political persuasion and we as a people like to sing out the claim that we are the land of the free.  But what is it?

Is it simply the freedom to speak our opinions or move freely?  Or is it a freedom to live in a manner that we choose?

It’s a hard and multi-faceted question.  Probably more than I should be biting off here since, to start with, I don’t know that I can even define the reality of the word.  I mean, is it even a real thing or merely an accepted illusion, something that sounds pretty good in theory but never really becomes real?

At the end of the day, I do think that any definition we give is based on our own personal preferences, our own need to rationalize our life choices and still feel pretty good after all is said and done.  We choose our freedom.

There’s a lot more to be said about this subject.  In fact, I’ve written many more paragraphs that won’t show up here today just because I couldn’t decide which direction to take my thoughts. But I wanted to at least broach the subject to talk about it in the context of the new painting at the top of this page, a 12″ by 12″ canvas that I call Hard Freedom.

In this piece, I see freedom as a hard choice, one that requires a willingness to step away from group thought and definition. It is built on hard decisions to reject anything that wants to impinge on the sovereignty of your freedom.  As a result, it can be an isolating thing, one that requires constant vigilance to insure the protection of that freedom.  In this freedom, the price that is paid is in being ultimately responsible for every decision made.

Real freedom has very few safety nets and can be a scary thing.  I am sure a lot of you seeing this island might think of it not as a place of freedom but more like a prison.

And that’s okay.  My freedom is most likely not the same as your freedom.

As I said, this subject has a lot of places to take us and maybe in the days ahead we can search these places.  For this morning, I will leave you with these scrambled half-thoughts along with the painting at the top and the words of Robert Heinlein.

And a question: What does your freedom look like?

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Never Was Land

Posted in Painting, tagged , , on January 4, 2017| 7 Comments »

GC Myers- The Lost Painting 2014This painting doesn’t exist anymore, only in this digital image shown above.  Well, here and under several more layers of paint of a completely different painting that now lives on the canvas that it once occupied.

It was a piece that I spent several days on in the studio a few years back.  I had an idea of how I wanted it to look in my mind and as the days passed, it just kept moving further and further away from how I thought it should look.  I worked feverishly at it, pulling out every trick I could think of in order to make it have some sort of sense of rightness, something that would make it acceptable to my mind.

More and more frustrated, I got to the point that I could barely look at this piece. The colors were wrong, not what I was sensing.  The surface didn’t seem right to me. And I couldn’t see its rhythm at all. It just felt wrong on so many levels to me. Finally, at one  particular moment on my fourth day of toiling to make it right, it reached what I felt was total failure.

It had beaten me down and I stepped away from it.  I knew the only brush I would put to it again would be one charged with black paint that would obscure the sight of this damned thing.

I have written about failure here before– in fact, I will replay one of my favorite posts tomorrow on just that subject– and have failed at many things in my time here on this planet so I am familiar with the feeling.  But this one really bugged me.  Looking at it in the studio seemed like a form of punishment, one that mocked me.  I couldn’t wait to get rid of it and within several days had blacked out the image.  A few days later there was another painting in its place, one that had that sense of rightness and life that I’d hoped for in this piece.

I still dislike this painting for not being the thing that I needed it to be at the time. But over the years I have come to find a bit of affection for it whenever I stumble across it in my files. It actually comes across pretty well on the screen, much better than it did in person–kind of the reverse of how my work normally fares.

Do I regret covering it up?  I don’t know.  It definitely felt right in the moment and has remained so the time since.  But, when I can put aside what I thought this painting should truly be, part of me likes this digital  image just a bit.  A goofy little bit.  At least I don’t hate it in the same way nor does it feel like the abject failure that it did when I was working on it. So I am glad I at least captured the image minutes before I covered it up.

Since it doesn’t exist, I think I will call this image Never Was Land.

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Become the Light

Posted in Painting, tagged , , on December 21, 2016| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- Outshine the DarkThe Night is a temporary condition.  

It always departs and its darkness remains only if we refuse to open our eyes.

Open your eyes.  

Look for the Light.

And if there is no Light, Become the Light.

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A new small painting,  4″ by 4″ on paper, that I call Become the Light.

I’ll leave it at that.  Have a good day…

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The Intention

Posted in Influences, Motivation, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on December 15, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- The IntentionEvery intention sets energy into motion, whether you are conscious of it or not.

–Gary Zukav

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I am calling this new painting, a small 5″ by 7″ panel, The Intention.  It is based somewhat on the quote above from Gary Zukav although the thought behind it, that we must first identify that thing that we seek in order to find it, is one that I have believed for quite some time.

I have long thought that once we identify our true need or desire that the energy of the universe reacts to that intention and sets a course for us to that destination which satisfies our want.  We begin to move in ways, sometimes subconscious and almost imperceptible, that lead us forward to that goal.  Small decisions end up having large consequences and we creep ever closer even though we may not be fully aware of our progress.

However, that end is not always reached nor is it always attainable.  Sometimes along the way we may reset our sights, realizing that we weren’t as earnest in our desire as we first believed.  The required effort may be more than we are willing to give or the results we are getting don’t produce the satisfaction we thought they might.

Or we might simply not be equipped to complete the journey.  We may just not have the ability, talent or temperament to reach our dreamed of goals.  But in that case we normally, while discovering what we cannot do, have uncovered some things that we can.

In finding what we are not, we sometimes uncover what we truly are.  And the universe takes note anew and leads us to that.

And that all starts with that initial intention which in turn becomes purpose.

I like to think that this piece reflects this idea, that the Red Tree here is sending out its plea to the universe and it is responding by setting energies in motion.

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In a Blue Place

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , , on December 13, 2016| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- In a Blue Place

You cannot get a grip on blue.

Blue is the sky, the sea, a god’s eye, a devil’s tail, a birth, a strangulation, a virgin’s cloak, a monkey’s ass. It’s a butterfly, a bird, a spicy joke, the saddest song, the brightest day.

Blue is sly, slick, it slides into the room sideways, a slippery trickster.

This is a story about the color blue, and like blue, there’s nothing true about it. Blue is beauty, not truth. ‘True blue’ is a ruse, a rhyme; it’s there, then it’s not. Blue is a deeply sneaky color.      

― Christopher Moore, Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art

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He’s right, blue is a deeply tricky color.

Even looking now at the new painting above on this screen, an 8″ by 8″ panel that I call In a Blue Place, I can’t be sure that it is the same blue that I  see when I look at the actual painting.  And that change of hue can alter the reality of the painting, the feeling that comes from it.

Each person sees blue in a different way, some absorbing the overall tone of it while others latch on to the subtler tones within it.  If I say blue the blue that might spring to your mind may be so much different than the one I am trying to describe that they might be entirely different colors.

As Moore says: How do you know, when you think blue — when you say blue — that you are talking about the same blue as anyone else?

It can mean and be so many different things. And maybe this multiplicity is the basis in the lure of blue for me.

Blue is also tricky to properly capture in an image.  A painting like this particular piece is a nightmare to edit for me with all of its varying blues and tones and darknesses.  I know that the image that you’re looking at is not the same one that I am looking at beside me at this moment.

The one on the screen took me about an hour of editing to get to the point where on the screen it is only a mile away from the original.  I like it on the screen now but it is still a pale facsimile to the real thing.  There are whole hues of blue that aren’t showing in this image above and I’m not sure if I will ever be able to proplerly capture them.

I like that elusiveness, that slippery quality that comes with blue.  Yes, it is a color filled with meaning and emotion but it doesn’t want to be contained. And that is the thrill of working with it.

And that I will continue to do.

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Brushstrokes/Henri

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , on December 7, 2016| 4 Comments »

robert-henri-the-beach-concarneau-1899

Robert Henri- The Beach, Concarneau 1899

Strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and the littlenesses are in it.

–Robert Henri

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I like the idea of this thought from the great artist and teacher Robert Henri, that the strokes on the surface of a painting unconsciously capture the artist as they are at that moment.  This really plays into what I aspire to with my own work even though, to some, the end result may seem like nothing more than a picture made from pleasant colors  that appeals to the viewer on a surface level.

That is fine but more than that, I want it to carry my own fullness forward, want it to proclaim my existence in this universe. Even the smallnesses, flaws and imperfections that pockmark me as a human.  They, as much as the greater attributes to which I aspire, are a part of that existence.

Every visible edge on a thick stroke carries me forward, has meaning and content beyond that surface.  It reflects what I am feeling about what is on the surface before me as well as who and what I am as a person at that moment.  There are moments when I run my hands over the finished surface of a painting and I feel like I am a blind person reading something in Braille.  The bumps and edges have meaning for me that goes beyond is seen.

As Henri so well put it: All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and the littlenesses are in it.

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Waiting on the Light

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Quote, tagged , , on December 5, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Waiting on the Light 2006Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.

 
― Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

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I was looking at this older painting from years ago this morning.  It was a late entry into my Outlaws series back in 2006 and I think I only showed it for a very short time in one gallery.  It has floated around the studio for the past decade, never really finding a place of its own in which to dwell.

I wouldn’t call it a great piece.  Maybe not even a good piece but it has a lot of meaning for me.  Every so often I pick it up and find myself captured in the moments that I see in it.

I see myself in it, those early mornings when I find myself wide awake at 4 AM with the wheels in my minds spinning furiously.  Sometimes it is a good thing with something positive and creative emerging from this pent up energy.  Other times, it is sheer angst and I find myself much like the figure in this painting, staring out the window waiting for the dark to recede and be replaced by the first dim light of dawn.

On the good days that light is full of high hopes for what is coming.  It’s exciting.  On the not so  good days it is just a painful wait for what seems to be nothing but the possibility of having enough light to wash away the darkness and maybe spark something to move ahead on.  It is a dull and drab ache, a suffering that I am reminded of in the words at the top from author Paulo Coelho.

So you can see that this painting, though it may not be among the finest of my work, has real meaning for me.  So perhaps in a small way, even in a way that only applies to me, it is somehow a good piece.

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The Great Mystery

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on December 1, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers-Moon and MoodThe great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

–Andre Malraux

 

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