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Archive for the ‘Painting’ Category

In the Early Morning

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on February 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’m in the final stages of finishing the  large canvas that I’ve been documenting here, spending a lot of time weighing the weight of the colors and forms and adding a bit here and there to bring it into balance.  It’s slow work and sometimes I have to just get away from it to clear my head.  I have spent this time working on finishing a few other paintings that have been in hanging in limbo for some time, in various stages of semi-completion.

One such piece is shown above, In the Early Morning, a 12″ by 36″ canvas that I started some time ago and just couldn’t get it past the initial stages of laying in the composition and several layers of color on the sky.  The color just wasn’t working for me on this piece and I wasn’t excited by where it seemed to be heading.  So I put it aside, thinking that eventually I might try again.  I usually do try again although there is one similarly sized canvas in my studio now that is about a year old and about which I seem to have enthusiasm.  That piece may just end up getting painted over if only to get it out of my sight and mind.

On the other hand, this painting survived its time in limbo and I find myself glad of it.  It felt, the more I looked at it, as though it needed a single color to bring it together thematically.  I initially thought of making it a nocturnal scene but could see that, while I wanted the color to be blue, I wanted it to be lighter.  It ended up being more of a dawn scene, a time to which I am attracted to naturally, both personally and in my work.

I don’t know what this piece is saying yet but it doesn’t matter to me now.  It has a placid feel and I find the blues soothing throughout this scene.  It’s beauty is enough for now– in the early morning.

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A Little More Progress

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on February 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I thought I  would show a bit more of the large canvas I’m working on at the moment.  As I’ve described in previous posts, it’s a 54″ tall by 84″ wide canvas that has been biding its time for nearly 10 months in my studio, waiting for me to finally give it some life.  Well, it’s beginning to take shape and I can see better its final stages, if things work out as I hope.

I’m always a little hesitant to show these pieces in progress because sometimes they lack the life that the final stages of the process bring.  But even though there is still a lot of depth to be added, this piece is gaining animation quickly.  It’s been interesting seeing how the colors of the fields have changed as other colors are added in the process, some of the reds and oranges that seemed to jump off the canvas modulated in intensity by adding varied shades of green and yellows.

I’ve brought the sky to a certain point where it creates enough ambiance that I can be influenced by it  but is not yet at its final intensity.  I see a certain blue in my mind that will be a challenge to pull off here but at least it is there now, pulling at my mind. 

The same goes for the great black void that is a lake in the center of the canvas.  I see a certain color and depth ahead for this critical part of the composition,  which is the focal point for the whole thing, everything else revolving around and reacting to it.  The overall strength of this painting  is dependent on my ability to recreate the color that I see in my mind for this section.  If I don’t reach that visualized color, what could be a very good painting could become a ho-hum piece.  As a result, my mind is always running through methods of achieving that color even while I am at work on other parts of the painting.

Today should be a pivotal day for the bigger part of the composition, as I finish up this layer of color on the landscape and begin adding what may be the final layer for some parts of it.  The composition should really come together at this point,  just waiting for that color in the lake.

We shall see.

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Progress

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , on February 9, 2012| 7 Comments »

I debated over showing the  progress of the large painting on which I am currently working.  I know that I have done it it the past , especially with this style of work, but I almost felt like I wanted to keep this one more guarded.  It feels kind of like pulling the curtain back on the little man working the controls which make him appear as a much more magnificent Wizard of Oz.  Or maybe it’s like showing how the sausage is made– tasty but nobody wants to see it.

But whatever I thinking, in the end, I decided that I would show how this piece is moving.  If the final product is not worthy, knowing how it came to be so won’t taint it and if it ends up being a good piece, nobody will care or remember.

Again, this is a 54″ high by 84″  (4 1/2′ by 7′) canvas that I have finally decided to start after 10 or so months of pondering it in the studio.  Well, pondering is overstating it.  Avoiding is probably closer to the mark. 

 This is the progress after about three days of roughing in the composition with red oxide paint and I am  finally nearing the end of this this part of the progress.  As I near the terminus where the landscape ends and the sky will begin, I have started roughing in with a piece of rouge chalk, trying to find that final silhouette that will stand out in the final product.  I am hoping to finish this phase today.

So far, I am pleased.  The elements all seem to work well together and the whole composition has a unity that I am looking for.  This is vital especially in a piece of this scale where any element that lacks that sense of rightness will be magnified by the sheer size of the comsposition.  I am really beginning to see how I think the painting will finally emerge and I am getting antsy, wanting to get beyond this initial phase.  But as I said earlier, the key is to not jump ahead, not speed up at any point.  If I make a shortcut now, it will change that final version dramatically.

So, I will be patient.  But I must go.  Gotta paint.

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Taking Advice

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on February 6, 2012| 1 Comment »

Sometimes you find yourself out little bits of advice to other people, never realizing the irony behind the act.  Take yesterday’s post, where I passed on some advice from Chuck Close about getting to work and not waiting for inspiration.  Well, after reading what I had read yesterday morning, I looked across the studio at a large canvas that I had prepared last year, knowing that the time to take Close’s words to heart was at hand.

The canvas is 4 1/2′ by 7′  and has been haunting me for almost a year.  I had written about this canvas in a post last March called Daunting and I guess it must have been just that because I have found excuse after excuse to not start working on it over the past 10 or so months.  Too busy doing other things and the sort.  But in reality I was just plain scared of facing such a large challenge.

But thinking about Close and his words as well as his work and the challenges he has faced in his life made me feel a bit embarassed.  You shouldn’t run away from big challenges.  You should embrace them as an opportunity to simply overcome in a bigger way. I know that and have passed on that advice to others over the years.  Yet, here I was, not heeding my own words.  This was a challenge and to put it off only created other problems of avoidance.

So, I finally put it on the easel and started at it. 

It was difficult to start but it slowly is beginning to take form.  It will be a long process, much longer than I am accustomed to in my work, and I know that this will a challenge.  I will have to fight my urge to shorten the process, to take shortcuts that might not be too noticeable to the outside observer but would nag at me in the aftermath of completion. 

But the battle has been engaged and I am on the way to whatever this canvas holds for me.  We shall see…

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Where the Road Ends

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on February 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.
—Buddha

This is a new painting that recently went to Watts Fine Arts in Zionsville, outside of Indianapolis.  It’s a large canvas, 20″ tall by 60″ wide, that is called Where the Road Ends. 
 
I often use a pathway or road leading into my work, the idea being that it serves as an invitation for the viewer to enter the scene.  Sometimes the path simply cuts through the landscape and runs to a horizon, a symbol of  the continuity of the journey.  But sometimes the path seemingly ends and I find myself at these times asking myself what that means, both in the context of the painting and in my mind.  Is it the reaching of a goal, such as the truth to which Buddha alludes above?  Or is it merely a road that comes to an end?   
 
Probably both are correct.  In the process of painting I don’t go forward with this final image in mind.  The road neither ends nor goes on when I am in the midst of painting.  It’s just there.  But at a certain point, the composition demands that a decision be made, to either continue with it or to let if disappear behind a knoll.  The easier decision is always to continue, to let the path represent  the continuum of time.  It is natural and something we can all relate to in some way.  We understand theconcept of the journey.
 
But to terminate the road means that there is some sort of finality, an endpoint.  Be it wisdom, truth, death or some other sort of epiphany, this terminus presents a great opportunity for symbolism.  Enter the single Red Tree.  Set against the end of the path and the  landscape that opens to lines of distant hills, it becomes an icon for that for which we strive. 
 
 Perhaps it is a symbol for our wiser self in the here and now, enlightenment found.  Perhaps for some it represents an afterlife, the step beyond our earthly journey.  Or it could be any number of other readings.  But however it is read, the Red Tree here, sitting away the end of the road, demands engagement from the viewer, demands that they consider its meaning to them.
 
And I like that.
 

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Travel Days

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , on January 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’m on the road for the next couple of days so check back later for the next post here.  I’m heading out to the Indianapolis area where I’m delivering a new group of work to Watts Fine Art, a gallery located in Zionsville,  a suburb of Indy.  I’m excited to visit this gallery  and to meet the owners, Shannon and John Watts, face-to-face for the first time.  

One of the paintings that will be heading to Indiana is this new piece, Enduring the Storm.  An 18″ by 26″ painting on paper, it’s a piece that is really carried along by color and texture, both attributes having a heightened intensity here.  The composition’s simple design allows the yellows  to shine and the thick whorls of the gesso base contrast dramatically off the red crown of the tree as it flails in the wind.  Simple and strong.

I will be back soon.  Check back in a few days and have a great week.

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A Strange & Special Air

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , on January 18, 2012| 4 Comments »

“Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world – the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.”

—Leonard Bernstein

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I came across this quote from Leonard Bernstein that I really thought captured what I hope occurs in my work.  I think that my work is most successful when people allow themselves to feel themselves as part of the landscape before them, to enter and breathe in that strange and special air, as Bernstein describes it.  I know that this is the case for myself.  I have written about this here before, about how these landscapes, with their blue and orange fields and bright red trees, feel as real to me as looking out my studio window.  The fact of the blue in the field is overruled by its harmony within the composition which creates that sense of rightness to which I often refer.

Maybe this sense of rightness is what makes up that strange and special air.  I don’t know.  I only know that I still seek words or explanations to describe why a painting works, by which I mean has an emotional impact on the viewer.  The new painting above is such a piece for me.  It’s a 15″ by 25″ image on paper that I am calling, thanks to Mr. Bernstein, A Strange & Special Air.

I could sit here and try to break down the painting, talking about color and contrast, texture and depth.  Line quality and composition.   All of the things that I might momentarily consider while I’m at work on such a painting.  But when all is said and done, I still have no idea why it has its own life, its own strange and special air.  Except that I feel that I am there when I look at it. 

And glad of it.

Perhaps that is enough and all that needs to be considered.  For now, I accept that and will be satisfied to dwell in this landscape with its strange and special air.

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Tangled Up In Blue

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, Video, tagged , on January 14, 2012| 2 Comments »

I’ve been pretty busy in the studio lately.  That’s not unusual at this point of the year because it is when I’m gearing up for upcoming exhibitions but  in past years  this is when I have often  felt a bit blocked and far removed from the point where I wanted my work to be .   But thus far this year, things have been flowing easily and I feel as though I am near that sometimes elusive groove where the act of painting becomes more  instinctual than cerebral.  When I feel myself in this groove, I start to trust these instincts, this pushing back of conscious decision making.  As a result, there’s no dwelling over decisions at the table or the easel.  I just make the mark and move on from there.

And each piece brings an inspiration and desire for the next painting with ideas gushing forward.  I often find myself making quick little sketches on scraps of paper, little rough stick drawings really.  Just enough of the thought to be able to rekindle the idea later.  Often, I don’t make the sketch and the idea floats away and is sometimes fortuitously recalled at a much later date or is gone forever.  I sometimes think my best thoughts have taken this fleeting route.

The piece shown here is from this recent burst, a smallish canvas, only 6″ by 18″ that I call Tangled Up In Blue.  The title is, of course, taken from the old Bob Dylan song.  This is a simple composition, very typical of much of my work, but it’s carried strongly forward by it’s colors and contrasts.  It has a dramatic edge to it.  I think the red of the mound really highlights this feeling of high emotion.  I try to envision it in other, more natural colors and the result is less potent, more understated.  This feels to me like the tangled trees are two lovers springing from the same red bleeding heart.  The intensity of the red mound and the trees is a sharp contrast to the cooler blues of the water and sky, even though they still have their own intensity.

But the piece is probably brought to completion by the break of pale yellow in the sky, the light that comes through creating chasms in the blue night wall.  This break sets off all the other color and creates a sense of moment in this small, simple piece.  The result is that the result is greater than the sum of its parts.

Or at least I think so.

Here’s a little music.  I bet you thought it would be Tangled Up In Blue.  It was going to be but I came across this version of  a different Dylan song, Love Sick.  I really like this film and performance of a song that has been a favorite since it first came out in 1997 and decided to share it instead.  Enjoy.

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Discovery’s Door

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on January 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

In the past year or so,  I have done a series of paintings where I took out much of the color in my work, leaving behind sometimes monochromatic renderings of my compositions.  But recently I have swung back to the deeper, richer colors that has long marked my work.  I think this new painting is a good example of this return to color.

I call this piece Discovery’s Door and it’s a 15″ by 25″ painting on paper.  The Red Tree here is again the central figure and holds a position that feels like it is in a spotlight as its image emerges into sight from behind the darker trees that frame it.  It’s this emergence that gives me the discovery in the title as well as the bright light that seems to be illuminating the tree.  A light of epiphany, self-discovery.

The colors here are very strong but there is a harmony between them that makes their impact seem softer and natural.  I don’t think this will come through in this image on a computer screen but the blues and greens of the sky and the water have an opalescence that brings to mind a favorite color of mine from the windows of Louis Comfort Tiffany.  It gives this piece  a bit of the feel of a stained glass panel, something I often hear from people who see my work for the first time.  I definitely see that here.

I also think the intensity of the color here enhances the sense of self-discovery implied in the title.  As though the realization of one’s true self suddenly makes everything near seem more vivid and alive, forcing their way into the memory of the moment, creating a sensory marker. I know that I often remember major moments of my own life either  in deep colors or in strong scents.  That is what I see here in this image of a moment of self-realization– the vividness of the moment.

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Coming In the New Year

Posted in Current Events, Painting, tagged , , on January 9, 2012| 2 Comments »

2012 is going to be a very exciting year for me– and not only for the Mayan Apocalypse.  I have three solo shows at the galleries that represent my work all set around my upcoming  exhibit,  Internal Landscapes: The Paintings of GC Myers, at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown which runs from August 17 through December 31 of this year.  There will also be four gallery talks, including one at the Fenimore in November. So, as I say, it looks to be a busy and exciting year.

Also new this year is an energetic Midwest gallery that will begin representing my work beginning later this month.  Watts Fine Art opened in 2010 in the historic district of Zionsville , a suburb of Indianapolis with tree-lined brick streets.  It is ran by Shannon and John Watts, a young couple who retired a few years back from extremely sucessful corporate careers and decided to make their passion for art their newest life adventure in the form of a gallery dedicated to bringing the very best contemporary art to the Midwest. 

Shannon and John have a palpable excitement for the work they represent which is something that, as an artist, you hope for in the gallery staffs that represent your work.  Their enthusiasm for their gallery and the possibility of showing my work there was key in my decision to join with them.  They also have a wide and long-range vision for their gallery,  wanting to introduce collectors throughout the entire Midwest with their collection of artists from around the country.  I am really pleased and enthused about joining their gallery and having Shannon and John represent my paintings.

So, with all of this on my plate, I guess I should get back to work!

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