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Archive for the ‘Painting’ Category

Reflecting

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on April 28, 2015| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- ReflectingThis is a new painting that has been grabbing my eye here in the studio lately.  It’s a 16″ by 20″ canvas that I am calling Reflecting for now.  It will be included in my solo show, Native Voice, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria which opens June 5.

The title comes from the light and form of the arc of the foreground that seems to be reflecting the light and form of the moon above.  But it is also refers to the posture of the Red Tree as it seems to be gazing  into the sky.  For me, it has a feeling of  great pondering, of both looking outward and inward.

Reflection is, after all,  the act of turning one’s thought on itself to discover its true reality, like looking in the mirror and wondering who the hell that person is who is looking back at us.  The Red Tree here is a reflection of the moon which itself reflects the greater power of the sun which, in a way, might reflect the ultimate power of the universe. And maybe that is what this is ultimately about–  looking for traces of that universal power in our  earthly self.

I will have to reflect on that for a bit…

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Deliberations

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on April 17, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- DeliberationsThis is a new 12″ by 24″ painting on canvas that, for the moment, I am calling Deliberations.  I finished it yesterday and have been looking at it ever since, trying to decipher what it is that I am seeing in it, why it is pulling me in,  Something very cryptic in it– perhaps it’s the birds or the Red Chair or the stubbed off tree limbs– that fills me with questions.

What is this place?  What do those birds have to do with the Red Chair?  Is the sun rising or falling past the horizon and is that snow on the ground?  Why is the Red Chair in the circle of earth?

Quite honestly, I don’t know.

Starting with the given title, Deliberations, I begin to see this as a place of  judgement, either some sort of self-judgement or a spiritual reckoning.  As  though it is a place where when one has passed on, they go to review their life to determine what they done with the time given to them here on Earth. The life in question is the Red Chair, the red representing the physical embodiment.  The birds might be witnesses or judges or both.  The light over the horizon might be the next step forward– heaven, if that is what your belief system tells you it is called– and the trees act as a barrier between this place and that next step.

Kind of reminiscent, in a more symbolic and  folky way, of the Albert Brooks/Meryl Streep movie, Defending Your Life, where the dead find themselves at a Disney-like resort where, over several days they attend hearings where they review and defend the life they have lived to to determine whether they have learned its lessons in order to move on to a more ethereal plane.  If not, they return to try again.

But maybe this is just a red chair in the woods and those are simply some birds who frequent those woods.

Who knows?  It’s all in the eye of the beholder.  As for myself, I will deliberate on it a little longer…

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Gallery Talk/ Simplex

Posted in Neat Stuff, Painting, tagged , , , on April 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- SimplexThe last couple of weeks here I have been mentioning the Gallery Talk at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA tomorrow, Saturday, April 11.  Events begins at noon with a reception at the gallery with the Talk beginning at 1 PM.  One of the highlights of the day is the drawing which takes place immediately after the talk where one attendee will win one of my paintings.

The painting to be given away is a 10″ by 30″ canvas titled Simplex that is shown above.  As I have pointed out in the past, I try to choose significant pieces to be given away these events and I think this painting fits the bill nicely.  I liked this piece from the moment it emerged and always felt there was a certain understated elegance in it.

The word simplex means having only one component and it fit for me,the painting seeming to be about the idea of  existing in simplicity, focusing on nothing but that very moment of being and the pleasures of that moment : The enjoyment of one’s solitude or  feeling the warmth of of the sun or the coolness of the breeze.  The quiet pleasure in watching the clouds move in the sky.  Simple things and simple moments that, if we recognize them, give our lives greater depth and meaning.

And that’s what I see in my view of this painting.  Hopefully, some lucky person will find similar meaning in it tomorrow.

So, if you are in the Erie area tomorrow please stop in at the Kada Gallery.  The talk looks to be entertaining and there will be some other surprises along with the drawing so I hope to see you there on Saturday.

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Tides of Change

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on April 8, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Tides of Change smIf there is no struggle, there is no progress.

—Frederick Douglass

 Narrative of His Life, 1845

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We humans are an imaginative lot.  When the first light breezes of any sort of change comes rustling through our leaves, our imaginations go into high gear, filling our minds with images of worst possible scenarios.  So we brace ourselves and struggle against the wind as it becomes stronger and stronger.  Some of us topple over and some lose all our leaves as the wind’s intensity continues to grow.

But some of us set aside our fears and adjust to the wind.  We give a bit and relax,  finding a comfortable position to endure the wind and trusting  that our roots will hold us fast.

We adjust and find that we stand as easily in the new day as we did in the days before.

Change is an inevitable force of nature. It is our adjustments to these tides of change that determine whether we fall or stand, fail or prosper.

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That’s just one reading for the new painting at the top  which is titled, of course, Tides of Change.  This 12″ by 36″ canvas will be at the Kada Gallery in Erie for the Gallery Talk there that takes place at 1 PM  this Saturday, April 11.  The talk and the drawing  to win one of my paintings is open to all. So if you have a different take on this painting and want to share it, come down to the Kada Gallery on Saturday and we’ll talk.

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Making Contact

Posted in Painting, Technique/History, Work In Progress, tagged , , , , on April 3, 2015| 7 Comments »

GC Myers- Away From the Chaos smI mentioned here earlier that I am giving a Gallery Talk next Saturday at the Kada Gallery in Erie.  When I give one of theses talks it is not uncommon for me to bring a small group of new work for the gallery. One of the pieces that is heading to Erie with me is this painting, a 24″ by 20″ canvas that is titled Away From the Chaos.

Actually, I should say that it was titled Away From the Chaos.

You see, this painting started its life several years ago in  a much different form.  It was a piece that showed just once for a very short stay in a gallery then moved to the wall of my studio where it has been ever since.  It was one of those pieces that seemed to be right  in the moment but was just missing that something which  kept me from making contact with it.  It was like a person who has experienced a stroke and has full cognizance with much to share but just can’t make the person in front of them understand.

And I was that person who couldn’t understand.  I could see there was something in it.  Life and emotion.  But  muted and totally restrained.  The colors of its sky felt pointy and sharp to me–a sickly yellow that  didn’t add depth in the image and gave the whole thing a green pallor that belied what I felt was the emotion behind the painting.

So for years, I would go into the room that held this painting and feel a sickening, uneasy pang whenever my eyes settled on it.  It made me sad that it seemed there physically but was so far away.

Finally, a week ago, I could take it no more and decided to either revive it or kill it.  The sky transformed in depth and color, becoming warmer and more giving.  The fields brightened.  The brightness of its color and the roof line of the barn changed as I altered one edge that always felt wrong to me– a small flaw but one that became larger when combined with the others.

And the Red Tree made its way to a central point where it truly became the welcoming symbol that I often see it as.  It suddenly felt so much more alive and complete.  It could reach out now and communicate to me.  And that’s a comforting thing for me.

The old title no longer seemed appropriate.  I settled on Making Contact.  Now it seems right.

Away From the Chaos -evoltion

 

This painting can be seen  at the Kada Gallery next Saturday, April 11, where I will be giving a Gallery Talk which begins at 1 PM.  If you can make it, please stop in– we will be having a free drawing for one of my original paintings and a few other goodies.  I am aiming for an entertaining and , hopefully, an enlightening talk. Hope to see you there.

 

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Quote of the Week/ Chagall

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , , , on April 2, 2015| 1 Comment »

Marc Chagall Sun of ParisWhen I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it / a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand / as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it is bad art.

–Marc Chagall

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I haven’t mentioned Marc Chagall  here but once over the 6+ years I have been doing this blog and I very seldom list him as one of my influences or even one of my favorite artists.   But somehow he always seems to be sitting prominently there at the end of the day, both as a favorite and an influence.

One way in which his influence takes  form is in the way in which he created a unique visual vocabulary of symbology within his work.  His soaring people, his goats and horses and angels all seem at once mythic yet vaguely reminiscent of our own dreams, part of each of us but hidden deeply within.

They are mysterious but familiar.

marc-chagall-fishermans-family-1968And that’s a quality– mysterious and familiar– that I sought for my own symbols: the Red Chair, the Red Tree and the anonymous houses, for examples.  That need to paint familiar objects that could take on other aspects of meaning very much came from Chagall’s paintings.

He also exerted his influence in the way in which he painted, distinct and as free-flowing as a signature.  It was very much what I would call his Native Voice.  Not affected or trying to adhere to any standards, just coming off his brush freely and naturally.

An organic expression of himself.  And that is something I have sought since I first began painting– my own native voice, one in which I painted as easily and without thought as I would write my signature.

  So to read how Chagall judged his work for authenticity makes me consider how I validate my own work.  It’s not that different.  I use the term a sense of rightness to describe what I am seeking in the work which is the same sense one gets when you pick up a stone and consider it.  Worn through the ages, untouched for the most part by man, it is precisely what it is.  It’s form and feel are natural and organic. There is just an inherent  rightness to it.  I hope for that same sense when I look at my work and I am sure that it is not far from the feeling Chagall sought when he compared his own work to a rock or a flower or his own hand.

Marc Chagall Song of Songs

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Light Within

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on March 30, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Light Within sm People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.

 –Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

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A number of years ago, I came across this quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the famed psychiatrist who pioneered the study of death and dying and introduced the Five Stages of Grief to us.

Her words really struck a chord,  for the human aspect as well as for the parallel I drew from it for painting.  Creating paintings that felt as though they were lit from within has long been an aspiration for me and I had never realized that there seemed to be  connection between that desire and my personal desire to be a decent and caring person.

But her words kind of put those two things together in my mind.  I began to see that my painting was a reflection of my aspirations.  That might not seem like much of a revelation but it certainly felt like one when I first read those words.  The work felt even more personal to me, more tied to my own character.  I felt that if I could continue to work hard at my work I could apply the same sort of effort to being a positively charged person and hopefully the two would someday merge together.  I don’t know if that’s good or bad but it became how I perceived what I was doing.

On the painting side, sometimes I hit close to my goal as far as feeling a painting is lit from within.  The piece at the top, a new 12″ by 24″ canvas, is such an example.  It just feels as though it has that inner glow I am seeking.  It is titled, fittingly, Light Within.

The personal side will take a little longer.  But this gives me some hope.

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Quote of the Week/ Finishing

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , on March 26, 2015| 2 Comments »

matisse.la musiqueI want to reach the state of condensation of sensations which constitutes a picture. Perhaps I might be satisfied momentarily with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind…Nowadays, I try to infuse some calm into my pictures and I keep working at them until I have succeeded in doing so.

–-Henri Matisse, 1908

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 It seems like every artist has a different answer for the question of  when a painting is done.  Whistler and several others said it was when all traces of its creation have been concealed on the surface.   Some say it is when the artist achieves his aim and others say they are never finished.  Edward Munch ( The Scream) said that a piece is done after it has had time to mature, weathered a few showers and endured the elements, including nail scratches.

I tend to go with the never finished group although Munch’s definition is appealing to my love of weathering and patina.  My goal is to have the work complete enough that they can exist on their own,to  be alive in the outer world.  In that respect, because they are human creations, I view them  very much as I view other humans– never quite complete and always imperfect.  That’s just how we are and I am certainly no different.

 I am a collage of imperfections that is still a work-in-progress.  If I saw me hanging on the wall I might want to take a brush and soften an edge here or there and add color in certain parts of my composition.  But I probably would not do it because those imperfections actually become part of the composition, create the contrasts that give us, as a painting, life.  And that , even with the flaws and weathering exposed, pleases me.

None of us is perfectly painted.  Nor should we be.

 

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Quote of the Week/ Limits

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , on March 19, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Archaeology-Rainbows EndThe thing I am most aware of is my limits. And this is natural; for I never, or almost never, occupy the middle of my cage; my whole being surges toward the bars.

–Andre Gide

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I chose this week’s  quote from the late French author Andre Gide, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, because as an artist I find myself sometimes wondering about my limits, questioning whether I am pushing myself enough into new territory.  Gide uses a cage in his metaphor with his limitations being the bars that keep him from moving forward.  He is not content to simply accept these limits sitting contentedly in the center of his cage. No, he is always pushing and pulling at the bars, seeking to get past them.

In the past, I have expressed this same desire to press past my limits with a metaphor where the artist climbs ever upward until they come to a plateau where they are comfortable and safe.  It is a place where they could easily live out the remainder of their days with little worry, living an easy life by retelling stories that made up the journey up to this point.  Many might not even notice there is still a mountain hovering above them to climb, if they just dare leave the comfort of the easy plateau.

Gide’s cage is my plateau and while he is trying to break through his bars, I find myself still questioning if I have the nerve to start climbing.  Oh, there are first steps, tentative meanders up the path but only far enough that I am within sight and  can return easily to my safe haven on the plateau.

When does the real trek upward begin?  When does one begin to thrash at their bars?

Where are you in your own cage?

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I used a painting from several years,  Archaeology: Rainbow’s End, to illustrate this post.  For one thing, I just like this image.  But more importantly, looking at it seemed to remind me that one’s creative past is often buried and gone from sight.  Or at least, should be if one is going to continue growing.  Like the tree in the painting, you grow from that past existence  being nourished by it.  But you don’t live only in that past.  You must move upward like the Red Tree in this painting to find clear air.

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Way of Peace

Posted in Motivation, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on March 16, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Way of Peace smStop looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment,
for validation, security, or love —
you have a treasure within that is infinitely greater
than anything the world can offer.

-Eckhart Tolle

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I call the new painting above Way of Peace.  It is a 30″ by 40″ canvas that is now showing at the West End Gallery.

I am really drawn personally to this piece, very attracted by its peaceful quiet and the depth of its inviting warmth.  I like the way the path leading into the scene seems to transform into a stream, as though there is a moment as one struggles along the path toward their own inner reality when resistance fades and it becomes easier to proceed ahead.  Less struggle and more fluid and free flowing.  More natural.

I think the words at the top from Eckhart Tolle mesh very well with the message I find in this piece.  It is one that is a common theme in my work: that real discovery is found within our self. And I think this painting oozes with that message.  It may seem to be a representation of the outer world and if that is how you see it and that satisfies your appreciation of the piece, that is perfectly fine.  Absolutely nothing wrong in seeing it that way.

But for me, it is in fact an aspiration-based self portrait constructed on an inner landscape.

Sounds like a mouthful but it’s pretty simple at its heart.  Think of what you might picture for yourself if someone asked you to paint a picture of of who you are or hope to be. Some might paint a straight portrait.  I picture myself and my aspirations in the landscape and this piece is very much how I see it.

However, there are some miles to go before I get there…

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