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Archive for the ‘Painting’ Category

There Is Still a Sun

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, tagged , on May 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- There Is Still a Sun...I am still kind of reeling from the flu but seem to be gaining ground on it.  Yesterday, I was looking at some older work and came across an image of a small piece, something like 2″ by 8″ on paper,  that I hadn’t considered for several years called There Is Still a Sun.  It was from 8 or 9 years back and was part of a series of  small paintings with industrial skylines as the backdrop.  It was a short-lived series of work that had moderate success but was one that I really enjoyed painting.  It was all about the challenge of design and color and many of the things I observed while painting these pieces found their way into later works.

This particular piece was one of my favorites from the group, more vertical than the others with finer linework in the silhouetted forms of the skyline.  The colors and forms meshed well here, giving the piece a less representational feel.  It was more graphic and almost abstract.  For me, it just worked on many levels.

Looking back at pieces such as this is important for me as my style and process is changing almost constantly, never really settling into one distinct process.  These pieces remind me of how different colors were used, how certain pieces start differently and how design within the picture evolves.  It reminds me to trust my ability to create from reaction.  It fires me up, making me want to alter in small ways some of  the ways in which I am currently working, to get away from the groove in which my process has settled.

Funny how so much can come from glimpsing a little piece from years ago.  Perhaps if I hadn’t been ill, I wouldn’t have stopped to look at this piece, wouldn’t have taken the time to consider these things.

Now, I just have to get back to the paints…

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The Way of the Master

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on May 2, 2014| 6 Comments »

“There is one single thread binding my way together…the way of the Master consists in doing one’s best…that is all.”

– Confucius 

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GC Myers- The Way of the Master

I originally had a different title in mind for this new painting,which is 24″ by 36″ on canvas.  I saw it as being about the end of a journey, about coming to a point that marked the highest level of emotional  and spiritual development.  But then I remembered this quote from Confucius and it had immediate resonance.

It all comes down to effort in the end.   Everything that comes to us, everything we desire and value,  ultimately depends on the amount of effort we choose to put forth.  Things done half-heartedly and with little attention never prosper or develop.   Those things you take for granted never grow into something more.  They only diminish with less attention.  You can witness  this in every aspect of your life. I know I can see it in my own.  Everything I value– my marriage, my work and my peace of mind– requires hard work  and maintenance, my very best effort.

This full effort ultimately leads to a deeper sense of connection with those things we value, emotionally and spiritually,  and I suppose that’s what this piece signifies for me.  I believe that any thinking person wants to reach their highest point of development, wants mastery over their own physical and spiritual life.  This painting reminds me that it is obtainable if I am willing to give my very best.

As Confucius says: and that is all.

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Taking a Different Perspective

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on April 17, 2014| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- April 2014This is a new painting, a still untitled 12″ by 12″ canvas. Normally when I look at such a piece I see in it something hopeful, forward looking toward a distant horizon.  Destiny bound.  But while I was looking at this piece, absorbing it and trying to take in its feeling, something I had read at some point came to mind.  I can’t remember who said it but the gist of it was that you can’t connect the dots of destiny by looking forward– you can only connect them by looking backwards.

In other words, you can’t plan your destiny.  But you can see how you arrived where you are.

This idea of connecting the dots by looking backwards was no stranger to me.  That was the central appeal of  genealogy for me, being able to find the trail that brought us to where we are at this moment.  To see that path in some sort of view that takes what might be very mundane lives when seen individually and places them in a grand and sweeping perspective.  Doing this made me feel connected with my humanity, able to see that I was not some sort of alienated being  but was a part of that sweeping vision.  Would I be a noteworthy part?  That I could not tell.

As it was said, you can’t plan your destiny.

So looking at this piece with this thought in mind, I no longer see it forward looking.  I view it as the perspective of someone who has turned around on the trail and is looking back at from where they came.  And there’s a certain synchronicity in this.  The sun and the water represent our evolutionary beginnings and the path, our trail though the ages.

Strangely, it doesn’t lose any of its hopefulness by taking on this perspective.  In fact, I now find it comforting from this perspective, that I have a purpose and responsibility as the recipient of a task that must be carried forward, at least for my short stint here on the trail.

The dots are connected and now I can look ahead…

 

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Frankenstein’s Monster

Posted in Painting, Technique/History, tagged , , on April 15, 2014| 3 Comments »

GC Myers Failed Painting detailThe image shown here is a tiny part, a background detail,  of a painting that I worked on for several days a month or so back.  I would show you the whole painting as it is at the moment, which is a canvas covered with black paint.  This little detail is the only part of this piece  that I feel comfortable showing and the only bit of it that you will ever see because this painting  just did not work.  At all.  It started wrong and over the days I worked on it continued to get even more wrong.  Even sitting here, looking at this detail, I am tempted to take a brush loaded with black paint to my computer screen to paint away the memory of its wrongness.

Just plain wrong.

It started as a much too concrete idea,  one that was too clever and too thought out.  I have always maintained that I am not smart enough to rely on my conscious brain to create ideas that can come alive and that my work is at its best when it flows from  intuition and reaction and feel.  This painting was surely proof of that.   I tried to force my brain into this painting in every way and it never took on any sort of organic feel, never had a rhythm, never came remotely to life.  I made dozens, maybe hundreds, of conscious decisions in this painting and it seemed as every one was wrong and made the whole thing a greater mess.

I knew within a day or so that it was futile, that this patient was dead on arrival.  But instead of rolling it into the morgue, I decided to try to bring it to life as though I were Dr. Frankenstein working over his poor monster.  This painting certainly resembled the Frankenstein monster– a good part here and there but stitched together crudely and an overall abomination.  It was as abject a failure as I had created in some time.

It was my monster.

I kept the beast around for several weeks and it became too painful to bear, seeing this tortured monster in the corner, more dead than alive.  I could have put it away to remind me of the folly of my own cleverness but I just wanted it gone,  all evidence of it erased.  So I broke out the brush and within moments it was but a memory.  Of course, I took a photo just in case I needed a reminder of  my own fallibility and failings.

I have quite a pile of such reminders, some more monstrous than others.

This monster was gone but it had taught me a lesson which was to keep the mind clear, to try to not force life where it has not taken hold on its own.  Trust the inner parts, my intuition and subconscious.  The life of a painting can’t be forced.   There is a natural rhythm needed that you can’t create.  You must find it and embellish it so that it becomes visible to others.  In this way, painting becomes less like the surgery of Dr. Frankenstein.

We know how that story ends.

 

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Into the Pure Land

Posted in Influences, Motivation, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , on April 12, 2014| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- Into the Pure Land smI’ve had this newer painting in the studio for a few weeks now and it has become one of those pieces where my eyes often come to rest.  That’s something I wasn’t so sure would be the case when I was painting it.  In the earliest stages when I compose the piece by blocking in the forms with a red oxide paint, it felt stiff and lifeless.  This is not necessarily strange at this point in my process but this piece felt even more so.  But with each change in the surface, each layer of paint added, it gained life and depth.

By the its finish, it was instantly drawing me inward.  It had such a meditative effect that I began to think of it in terms of mantras and focal points.  But ultimately, I began to see it as an endpoint, a desired place of attainment.  As a result, I settled on Into the Pure Land as a title for this 10″ by 20″ piece.

In some forms of Buddhism, there are seven levels of heaven, whose name takes on a different meaning than the one denoting paradise that we often associate with the word heaven.  Their heavens are those realms of cyclical existence where a being is reincarnated time after time, hopefully gaining wisdom with each incarnation.  If the being is able to gain total enlightenment, nirvana,  he moves beyond the heavens and into the Pure Lands, which are the eternal abodes of the Buddhas.  This would be closer to the traditional heaven that most likely comes to mind.

This piece has that feel for me, an idyllic place attained by working to pass  through many levels, represented here by the path passing through the layers in the landscape’s foreground.  The radiating bands in the sky represent the eternal pull forward through these layers, almost as a visual mantra that focuses the attention on reaching the endpoint of enlightenment, which I see here as the sun over the horizon.

Mind you, this is only my simplistic take on the concepts of a religion.  The five cent version.  But these terms strike a chord in me when I look into this painting.  Maybe that is my response alone, my personal reaction to my own expression.  For others, it might be a painting that makes them feel a little joy or just an attractive piece with a graphic feel.  Or it just might not be their cup of tea, period.  All are fine with me.  I’m just thinking about entering into that pure land…

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Who is Earl Kerkam?

Posted in Painting, tagged , , , on April 10, 2014| 3 Comments »

earl-kerkam1891-1965-1361546399_org I am very interested in the painter’s painter, those artists who garner the respect and  admiration of other artists while often not attaining the same sort of attention from the general public.  I try to figure out where the disconnect comes in how these artists are perceived so differently by these two groups.  I recently came across a prime example by the name of Earl Kerkam, a NY painter who lived from 1891 until 1965.

Kerkam trained in some of the finest art academies here and abroad, studying for a while with Robert Henri.  He showed his work in important shows alongside some of the greats of the early 20th century.  His work is included in some of the great museum collections of this country.  In the aftermath of his death,  modern artists of huge stature  such as  Mark Rothko and Willem  de Kooning proclaimed Kerkam to be one of the finest painters to ever emerge from America.

earl-kerkam1891-1965self-portrait-1361546314_bYet his work is basically unknown outside a handful of art insiders.  His work sells of very modest prices at auction and I doubt if anyone who reads this will have ever heard the name.

There could be many reasons for this relative anonymity.  Perhaps his work is too esoteric, too caught up in the dogma of style or too narrow in its range of emotional impact.  Perhaps his work was caught between eras, never really falling into a classification where he would be swept to the forefront of a wave. This might have something to do with it because, while his work is modern, it never really moved into the realm of the abstract expressionism that was the rage of the day.

I don’t really know and looking at his work I found myself torn between liking it in some instances and being indifferent to  others.  I can see how both sides, artists and the  general public, might take opposing views on his work.  His work remains an enigma to me and I don’t know if I will ever see enough of it, or at least a single piece that could be called a masterwork,  to make me say that he deserves to be among the beacons of mid-20th century painting  or if he was simply a fine painter who garnered just the attention his work deserved.   But for now, the name Earl Kerkam is at least on my radar and I will be open to finding other works from him that will move my perceptions.

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Proclamation

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on April 2, 2014| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Proclamation By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.

—Katherine Mansfield

October, 1922, Her final journal entry

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I came across this final journal entry from the writer Katherine Mansfield, who died much too early from tuberculosis at age 35, and thought how much her words fit what I was thinking about this newer painting shown above.  I call this 30″ by 40″ painting Proclamation and the thought and feeling it may be proclaiming might very well be the same as those expressed by Mansfield.

It is a painting that speaks of coming to an understanding of one’s self and stepping forward in the light to show that true identity.  It is at once flawed and beautiful.  Flawed by the scars of attained wisdom and change.  Beautiful because it is honest and real, open to the elements and all who look upon it.  It has become, to use Mansfield’s term, a child of the sun.

I think it would be too easy to say too much here.

Let it be at that.  A child of the sun.

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Harvest Moon

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , , on March 30, 2014| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Traveler- 2014I don’t know if this painting is exactly right for the title of this post or this song.  But in the early morning light it has a moonish glow in its center, the gray of the shadows muting the brightness of the color at its edges.  For a moment, it looks like it could be a harvest moon.  At least, what I think of as a harvest moon.

The actual title of this 18″ by 48″  painting is Traveler, which is also the title of my June show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.  It has been above my fireplace in the studio for a couple of months now and is wearing well with me.  I find myself often looking up at it, letting myself be pulled along that winding path toward that beckoning sun.  Or moon, depending on how I see it at any given moment, such as this morning.

I will write more about this painting and the June show at a later date.  For now, its a dreary, snowy  Sunday morning here and I need some music that will change my mood a bit.  Here’s Neil Young with a version of his always lovely Harvest Moon.

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Preston Dickinson

Posted in Influences, Painting, tagged , , , , , on March 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Preston_Dickinson_-_Factory_(c__1920) Columbus Museum of ArtI’m a fan of the Precisionist movement in art which was formed in the early 20th century and often depicted the industrial structures that were fueling the growth spurt taking place in America.  There are some big names in this movement, mainly Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth, both of which I have featured here in the past.  But, like many of the movements in art, there are many lesser  but equally brilliant stars in their universe.  I recently came across one that really hit with me, mainly because of the energy and breadth of his work.  I thought it was all really good, really strong and evocative.  But it moved in many directions, pulling from many inspirations.  There was some Futurist work, some elements of Cubism and others.  It was as though this was an artist that was so talented that he was having trouble finding that single voice that fit his needs.

Preston_Dickinson Old Quarter Quebec 1927 - The Phillips CollectionHis name was Preston Dickinson who was born in NY in 1891.  He studied as a youth at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase and soon after, with backing from a NY art dealer, headed off to Europe to study and exhibit there.  Coming back to America, he moved around a bit but by the late 1920’s was considered among the stars of American Modernist painting.

In 1930, he moved to Spain to live and paint and several months after being there contracted pneumonia and died there.  He was only 39.  He produced only a few hundred pieces of work in the twenty years or so in which he was producing work.

So maybe there is something to this feeling that he was still in the midst of finding his true voice.  It makes me sad to ponder what might have been and what sort of work was lost to the world when he passed away.  He was obviously a huge talent with an active and inquiring mind.

I am glad to have just stumbled across him now and hope that the joy his work brings me somehow moves into my own.Preston Dickinson Harlem River MOMA

preston-dickinson-tower-of-gold Preston_Dickinson - Street in Quebec- The Phillips Collection Preston_Dickinson_-_My_House_-_Google_Art_Project Preston_Dickinson - Industry 1923- The Whitney Collection

 

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A World To Call One’s Own

Posted in Motivation, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on March 10, 2014| 4 Comments »

A World To Call One's Own smMen fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death.  Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages.  Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid … Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

–Bertrand Russell

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I was looking at the painting above, a newly finished  12″ by 12″ canvas, trying to ascertain what it was saying to me.  I was picking up all sorts of symbols from it and was seeing it in from all sorts of perspectives but finally it came clear to me what I was seeing in this piece.  It was the freedom to create our own worlds, to define our own way of seeing and experiencing that world.  That freedom, that need to create my own world, is what always drew me to creative outlets.  It is certainly what drive me in my painting.

I didn’t always like what I saw in the outer world of reality and was usually powerless to change it.  But in my thoughts I could create an inner world that had reason and empathy or at least what I saw as reason and empathy.  It would be a place where these better thoughts could live and grow without the fear of being crushed by thoughtless others, people shackled to ideologies and beliefs that they accept and follow without questioning.  Without thinking.

That’s what these blood-red rows in the fields and the teal mound  and the cascading colors in the sky say to me.  This is my world and there, these all make perfect sense.  It is a place where one is always free to think what they might.  I think that’s why I chose the quote above from Bertrand Russell.  We all too often choose to not think, to just float along with the prevailing thought  of others, never trusting our own thoughts enough to fully live by them.  I know I certainly have fallen into that category in the past.

But we all have our own private worlds of wonder  inside of us if we dare to simply think.

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