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Archive for the ‘Painting’ Category

Presentation

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, Technique/History, tagged , , on July 7, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- With All Possibility smThis is a painting of mine from a number of  years back, a 16″ by 20″ canvas titled With All Possibility.  For the past several years it has hung in a back room of my studio but has remained a favorite of mine.  It’s part of a group of paintings of mine that is often referred to as the Dark Work which refers to the dark ground on which they’re painted and deep and dark  primary colors of the surface.  This work started in the months after 9/11 as we struggled as a nation to find footing.  This work was my emotional response at the time.  The work never gained the favor of my more typical work but I have always believed that it has something real in it, something that expresses a base emotion with genuine truth.

That’s why I probably give this work a go in the studio  every so often, painting new pieces to see if I still see something in this style.  This particular painting was part of  such a revisit back in 2007.  I thought at the time that this was a strong piece of work and, having had it around for a few years now, still believe so.  But it never raised any interest in its limited visits to a couple of galleries so I tried to figure out if  there was  fault in it.

Sometimes this is the case in some paintings, where I will have strong feelings over a piece that just doesn’t click with anyone.  I may be seeing something that is not visible in the surface of the work– an inspiration or even my own memory of the painting  process– which affects my judgement of the piece.  After some time, I will begin to see this and begin to see that my judgement of it was tainted, that I was not seeing the painting as it really was and, as a result, was missing real flaws in it.  Flaws that deprived it of the life that I thought I was seeing  when in fact I was only sensing my memory of the creation of it.  A big difference.

But looking at this piece, I still felt there was something real, something strong.  The forms, the colors, the textures– it all seemed to work in a rhythm of simple harmony with focus and depth.  Everything I look for in my work.  What was wrong?

It didn’t take long to figure it out.  It was my presentation of the work.  The frame.  At the time of this piece, I tried a very short-lived experiment with some gold-leafed frames, wide flat mouldings with a more classic  style.  I was trying to have the frame add weight to my work and it was a huge mistake.  It was not in any kind of sync with my work and it even went against my own personal rule which always has the edges of my work, on paper or on canvas, exposed.  I have only had a few pieces over the many years where the edges are covered and even those few still nag at me.

But here was this piece in this frame that would be more suitable for a more traditional pastoral scene in oil, its edges trapped under the gold-leafed rim.  It was all wrong.  How could I have not seen this long ago?

I unframed it and I immediately felt so much better, like a weight was lifted off my chest.  Liberated from the golden bindings of that frame, the painting seemed as strong and as vibrant as I had  thought .  I had been trying to present it as something that it was not and in the process had shaded its reality from the viewer.  It now sits without a frame and, if it ever leaves the studio, will have a proper presentation– edges exposed and ready to fly free.

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The Internal Landscape

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on June 2, 2013| 2 Comments »

gc-myers-internal-landscape-2012I am really pleased to have this painting, The Internal Landscape,  as part of my show, Observers, which opens at the the Principle Gallery this coming Friday.  If you have read this blog over the last year you may recognize it as it was featured  here as it was in the process of being painted and was the centerpiece of my exhibition last year at the Fenimore Art Museum.  It is a very large painting, my largest by far to date, that measures in at 54″ high by 84″ wide on canvas and can really dominate a space.

I mean that in a good way.

I can’t recall at the moment what I have written or said about this piece in the past so I am just going to write a few lines that are my impressions of it.  Hopefully, some of these line up with those words from the past.

I think of this as a very musical painting, filled with  rhythmic lines and notes of color.  Where some of my paintings are musical  and are songs, some simple, this piece is more symphonic, comprised of multiple elements and themes running through it and coming together in  harmony.  Even the gathering of houses on the right side of the lake remind me of a chorus of voices.  The whole piece sings for me.

Of course, that may just be me.  I am a bit embarrassed in writing about my work in glowing terms but I do like this painting a lot and think it is a culmination of sorts, a milestone on this journey, one that I am really pleased to be able to hang at this show at the Principle Gallery.  I have been showing there for over 16 years  and this is my 14th consecutive annual solo show there so it means a lot to me to be able include this if only to show that the work has been evolving and growing over the years there.

It will be interesting to see it hanging in that space.  Hopefully, it will live up to my words…

 

 

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Triple Play

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Painting, Personal Mythology, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on May 22, 2013| 10 Comments »

Foundation smBack in early April I showed a painting , Geometry of the Heart, on this blog.  It was an overhead scene of a baseball diamond being crowded in by a mass of red-roofed houses, one in which I found a lot of personal meaning.  It represented the way the game embeds itself in the minds of those who love it, how it creates a connection to tradition and memories of youth.  Perhaps more than anything in my life, baseball makes me feel connected to my  country and its history.

Putting this feeling on canvas was long overdue and I was so pleased with how both the finished painting as well as the feeling I experienced as I painted that I felt that I would do a small group for the my upcoming Principle Gallery show in June.  The result was trio of three small paintings, all on paper, that show three ball fields.  The first is shown here on the left and is approximately 6″ by 12″ and  titled Foundation.  I see the diamond serving as a base or foundation for the buildings beyond the outfield fence which seem to be sprouting from it.  Maybe the thought here is that the diamond serves as a classroom for the life lessons needed to survive  in the world beyond the fence.  I’ve written before how baseball is a game that is very humbling, that the best hitters in the game fail 7 out of 10 times at bat and that the greatest pitchers ever have had many losses.  It rewards individual effort but only in a limited way in that winning is based on a total team effort, dependent on each member of the team performing their job with their best effort.

Diamond smThe next is titled simply Diamond, and is 6″ by 8″.  This is the most reminiscent of  Geometry of the Heat and has a simplicity that brings to mind the innocence of the first days of playing the game, that first foray onto a real field.  For me, it brings back memories of the Little League field in Waverly, NY and the thrill of being on that diamond.  It was a beautiful park with bleachers along both foul lines, a well manicured infield and a wooden outfield fence emblazoned with local merchants ads.  To hear your name announced on the PA was a big thrill, a rite of passage from throwing the ball safely in your own yard to performing before strangers.  Daunting, yes, but it all seemed familiar because the game was the same, the diamond the same.

Night Game smThe third piece in this group is called Night Game and is 7″ by 9″.  The thing I get fro  this piece is that feeling when the daylight is fading and kids are still playing the game, not wanting to stop even as the ball becomes more and more difficult to see, until finally they must stop.   The empty field is still ringing with possibility and potential plays.  It seems as though there are always ghosts on ballfields,  phantoms from the past throwing the ball and running the bases.  This piece brings to mind a memory from my Little League days when I was put into pitch one game.  I had lousy mechanics and was never meant to pitch but I was game.  One of the first batters I faced hit a rocket that easily cleared the left center field fence. The whoops of the other team seemed to fade into the background as I watched the ball sail in the sky.

The ump came out to give me  a new ball as the other kid victoriously rounded the bases and the cheers from the other bench became loud again in my ears.  I smiled and said, “Wow, he really crushed that one, huh?”

“He sure did.”  He gave me the ball and I went back to it for a short while until I was mercifully pulled.  You give it a try and learn what you are and what you’re not.  Lessons learned.

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Ascendant

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on May 13, 2013| 8 Comments »

GC Myers 2013 AscendantThis is a 24″ by 24″ canvas  that I finished yesterday.  I am still going back and forth on the  title between Ascendant and Ascent of Man.  Obviously, you could tell without seeing it that it has something to do with a hill, mountain or mound, which comes as no surprise for those of you who know my work.  Using a form of the word ascend denotes a climb of some sort,  either in actuality or metaphorically.  Both initially come  to  mind for me when I look at this piece.

Maybe it’s the way the hill rises from amid the verdant forest and river that brings the title Ascent of Man to mind.  While not necessarily in direct reference to  Charles Darwin‘s work, I definitely see a symbol  of an evolutionary nature in the way the path moves upward through a series of switchbacks, several houses perched on its edge as it rises denoting man  as he evolves  from the earth and water.  The golden sky breaking over the edge of the treeline adds a richness, a sense of fertility, that adds flavor to this whole stew.

The  Red Tree at the peak of the hill symbolizes the present, the now that is the culmination of all that has come before.  Evolution, ancestry, history– whatever you choose to call it– has brought each of us to our own personal peaks.  We are all the sum of all that has led each of us to the present moment.

I really enjoyed painting this piece.  That’s not to say that I don’t find enjoyment of some sort in every painting.  Just the sheer thrill of seeing something form before my eyes and under my hand is always enjoyable.  No, it’s a different type of enjoyment that I’m talking about here.  It felt complete even before it was completely laid out in the initial stage of composition as I worked on the underpainting.  It felt right and balanced from the start which allowed an excitement to grow, an anticipation of how the painting would form and change with each subsequent layer of paint.

It’s that excitement that I have talked about before when I describe what motivates me in the studio.   I have often said when asked about this that the most important thing for me is finding that thing that excites me in the work, that thing that makes me feel the piece is beyond me.  That is usually the sign for me that the work is going to excite others and that’s what I felt here.

But, as always, we will have to see about that…

 

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Part of the Pattern

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on May 6, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Part of the Pattern

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns.  Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns.  If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher.  What we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish.

–Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

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I tend to agree with the snippet above from Chuck Palahniuk’s book.

Everything is built upon pattern.  Who we are and how we behave.  History.  Science.  Music and art.  It is all dictated by patterns.

Most of us don’t dwell too long on identifying patterns in the world around us and some of us will even refuse to acknowledge the predominance of pattern in the world, believing everything is random and chaotic.  I suppose that in itself is part of a pattern, a larger one that is so encompassing that we can’t see it from our vantage point within it.

 Just speculating there, of course.

I know that I am always looking for pattern, even when I’m not really looking.  I call it pattern, rhythm, flow, sense of rightness and other terms,  without knowing why I am drawn to this concept.  It just attracts me in that it is so much part of everything that there must surely be significance.

All of this flowed forward with this new painting, a 4″ by 17″ piece on paper that I’m calling Part of the Pattern.  It’s based on a theme I’ve used several times recently of pools rising through  a tall vertical picture plane like ladder rungs.  This particular piece was so much more stylized in its forms that it really became more about pattern than subject.  I see it both as a landscape and as some sort of underlying pattern that makes up the landscape.  A sort of DNA-like structure on which the world is built.  Whatever it is, it holds my eye and makes me keep searching for something in it.

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Destiny

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on April 24, 2013| 7 Comments »

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. 

-Joseph Campbell

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GC Myers- Destiny AwaitsImagine us all as being boats on the oceans of the world.

 Some of us drift aimlessly, of course.  That was how I first set out.  No idea where I was going or even in which direction to navigate.  At any given moment, what might be my destination could have been  right in front of me or in a totally different hemisphere thousands of miles away and I would not know.  I had no idea what to even look for as I drifted.

But  some of us set out for a known destination and fully expect to arrive at that point.  We have studied the maps and charts and set a course, making all the needed preparations and taking every precaution.  We have sought out the advice of those who have made that voyage before and have formed an image in our mind of how the whole journey will go.

 But sometimes things don’t go as we plan.  Sometimes we get blown off course by storms and lose our way.  Or we were not as prepared as we thought for the hardship of the voyage.  Or the advice we received was mistaken.  Or sometimes we arrive and find that there is no room for us to dock or that our destination just wasn’t as we had imagined before we set sail.

 Perhaps ultimately that destination was not our destiny after all and we must set off once more in search of it.  It must be out there, that place, that one spot that we feel is totally our own.

I suppose this is how I see this new painting, an 8″ by 20″ on paper that I simply call Destiny.  It’s a composition that I have visited several times in the past and one that always attracts me for the simple elegance and balance of it.  There’s a confidence and clean sharpness in the way the image comes across that makes it very palatable– it immediately announces itself to the viewer, regardless of how they personally interpret it.

This piece’s destiny is my June show, Observers, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

 

 

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Island of Souls

Posted in At the Movies, Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , , , , on April 19, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Island of Souls  Called Island of Souls, this painting, 16″ by 26″ on paper, uses the isolation of an island as its central theme.  I am not sure if my photography on this particular piece accurately captures the true color and feel of this piece so I may have to re-shoot this.  But this image does get most of what is important so I will get on with it.

The idea of an island has always intrigued me.  I think it comes from the paradox of perception that comes with them.  The isolation offers escape and safe haven from the outer world on one hand but at the same time has a sense of captivity and limitation on the other.  As an artist my working life is spent on such an island, either safely ensconced in the quiet safety of my studio or trapped in a self-made prison, depending on your viewpoint.

A lot of artists have trouble with this isolation but for me it has always been preferable.  I always think of  the film Papillon where inmate Louis Dega, played by Dustin Hoffman, finally accepts and adapts to his fate on Devil’s Island, the penal colony off the coast of French Guiana.  He eventually lives in a little hut away from the others and lives a quiet and simple life until the end of his life there.  I have always thought that , outside it being forced upon him as punishment, it was an existence to which  many  people might aspire, living on a tropical island with little to worry about from the outside world.

Maybe that’s what I see here.  I suppose it could be seen as some sort of a prison with the cluster of huts on a rocky island with a dock and no visible boat.  I tend to see it in more aspirational terms, as a place of peace with a sense of tranquility in the colors of this piece that complements this reading of this picture for me.

One man’s penal colony is another man’s paradise.

Here’s a song of the same name from Sting.  It’s from his 1991 album The Soul Cages and uses the island as a dreamed of place of escape for the boat builders of Newcastle as they toil over the great ships that they will never sail on.

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Guiding Lights

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged on April 11, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Guiding Lights This is a new painting, a 20″ by 24″ canvas, that I call Guiding Lights.  I showed the image yesterday on my Facebook page but didn’t have a chance to write much about it.  The title come from the the triangulated trio of elements that dominate this piece’s center– the lighthouse, the sun and the Red Tree.  Each represents the forms of guidance available to us as we navigate through life.

The lighthouse symbolizes how others move us along.  Mentors, teachers, family and friends who try to shed light on our path so that we may stay safe and  keep us from the dangers that lie ahead.

The sun represents the spiritual here, the guidance that many seek from their belief in a greater, omnipresent power.

The Red Tree in this painting  is a symbol for the instinctual, inborn guidance that we all possess to some degree.  It is our conscience, our intuition, our moral compass– each weighing our every move forward.

There is a path that tees near the bottom of this scene, in one direction heading right back into the greater mass of  red-roofed houses and the other heading out path edge of the houses where it becomes less crowded.  The path is isolated with only the guides I mentioned above  along for the journey.  This reminds me of something that I read a while ago, although I can’t exactly remember where it was or who wrote it at this early hour.  It was someone writing specifically about artists although I feel it applies to any endeavor.

The author wrote that in the development of an artist there comes a point where in order to reach their fullest potential, to find that singular voice, an artist has to be brave enough to move beyond their friends and peers.  They must leave them behind and move on alone.  It’s a vital step but a difficult one that most are not willing to take, if they ever even realize there is a choice to be made.

I think that’s what I see in this piece– the  journey for a personal vision and growth.

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Larger Than Life

Posted in Influences, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on March 28, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Larger Than LifeI am currently working on a new body of work for my annual June show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.   I am calling this year’s exhibit,  my fourteenth solo show there,  Observers, and the piece shown here is one of the pieces that will make up the show.

This painting, a 16″ by 26″ piece on paper, is called Larger Than Life.  It’s a continuation of the Red Roof landscapes that I have been showing on this blog lately.  This piece was another that came from my early morning session in the studio when I had several images come to mind during a sleepless night.  It evolved into something other than what I originally saw but I am actually more pleased with the final result than with the mental image that inspired it.  In my mind I didn’t foresee the little peninsula  that is home to the larger than life Red Tree but, as I worked along, it  just grew out of the mainland on its own.  It seemed a natural fit and I never questioned it and liked the way the causeway broke up the two blocks of color that make up the body of water depicted here.

The Red Tree is, as I pointed out, is larger the life which is obviously the basis of its title.  I really wanted to make it unnaturally large and expressive, its trunk and branches more shrub-like than one might expect from such a large tree.  I had toyed with the idea of a simpler, straighter and more sturdy tree but felt it would alter the entire feel of the piece and wouldn’t provide enough of a counterpoint to the uniformity and order of the houses that were on the opposite shore.  I see the Red Tree here a connector, the thing that binds the everyday, represented by the houses, to the ethereal that the horizon and sun represent here.  It needed to be bigger and more expressive and so it came to be.

I’ve been enjoying  taking in this piece over the last day or so.  The diagonals of color, the running ribbon of the path and the curves of the shoreline keep my eye moving through the piece.  As I said, it is more than I originally saw.

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Not Quite an Island

Posted in Influences, Painting, Quote, tagged , , on March 25, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Not Quite an Island When I awoke in the middle of the night, as I wrote in the last post, I had a piece in my mind that I really wanted to start on.  It was simply a causeway running out to a piece of land, an almost-island.  That was all I had in mind.  I held no details on the island itself or even how the causeway would look, just an idea of a strip running outward.

This is the piece that emerged, a 16″ by 20″ canvas that I call Not Quite an Island.  The title is based, of course,  on the famed piece of writing from John Donne that begins with  No man is an island and ends with Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.  It’s often portrayed as a poem but it’s part of a sermon, Meditation XVII, from a book of his sermons  titled Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. Donne was writing on the interconnected nature of the world, how one man’s suffering was the suffering of all men, that the death of any man somehow diminishes the whole of mankind.

I saw this piece as being about the impossibility of ever truly detaching oneself from the outer world.  As hard as we might desire to seek  isolation from the world, we always remain connected by virtue of our own humanity.  And the causeway here represents that connection to me, a lifeline to the larger outer world with the path that runs along it up to the Red Tree almost serving as a root nerve connected to the larger spinal cord of the world.  To cut off that nerve, that connection, is to lose all feeling.

It’s a simple painting but the simplicity of it actually reinforces the message, in that the image makes a striking and easy first impression.  There’s a meditative quality here, an easy flow and harmony to this piece that brings my eye back to it again and again.  It’s actually just as I hoped it would be when I got out of bed at 3 AM a few days ago, filled with anxiety.  In its way, it has alleviated that angst.  For the moment.

As it should…


					
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