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Archive for the ‘Painting’ Category

The Need to Paint

Posted in Biographical, Opinion, Painting, tagged , on October 28, 2009| 6 Comments »

GC Myers 2009I wrote a few days ago about how I am often mystified by the meanings of my paintings and how I this makes me glad that I still have the need to paint.

I thought about that after I hit the button to publish that post.  I have often heard artists say they had to paint, as though it were some sort of exotic medical quandary.

Paint or die.

It always kind of bothered me when I heard this, as though these guys were saying they had some sort of predestined calling.  Like they were prophets or shamans that the world, without their visionary paintings, would spin out of control.  It just always sounded a little pompous to me.

So when I wrote that it made me twitch a bit.  Maybe I’m the pompous ass here.  It certainly is in the realm of possibility.

But I find myself kind of standing behind what I said.  I do need to paint.  It’s not some call to destiny.  It’s not to transmit some psychic message to the world.  It’s more a case of me needing have a form of expression that best suits my mind and abilities.  Painting just happens to fill that need.  If I could yodel, I might be saying I need to yodel.

But I need to paint.

I need to paint to try to express things I certainly can’t put in words, things that awe and mystify me.  I need to paint to have a means to a voice.

I need to paint just to remind myself that I am alive and still have the ability to feel the excitement and joy from something that I have created.  I need to paint to feel the surprise of exceeding what I felt was within me, to go into that realm of personal mystery within and emerge with something new.  I need to paint because it has given me the closest thing I know to answers to the questions I have.

I need to paint because it is one of the few things that I’ve done fairly well in my life.

Would I die?

Nah…

I’d adapt and find something new but it would be hard to find something that would suit me as well.  So I guess I do need to paint after all.  Call me a pompous ass.  I don’t give a damn- I’ve got work to do.

The piece above is a new painting.  It’s a 12″ by 24″ canvas and I’m still working on a title.

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Burn Away the Dark

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on October 26, 2009| 4 Comments »

Burn Away the DarkI have discussed before how I translate my paintings for myself.  I have often described the blowing red tree I sometimes use as being symbolic of sacrifice or giving of oneself to something larger than oneself.  Or I have said that it could symbolize the sending out of something into the universe.  A message.  A prayer.  A hope or desire.

But there is another that I may have missed.  This new painting reminded me of what it might also stand for.

The flame.

It has the look of the flame and reminds me of the fire of thought, wisdom  and creation.  The flame that illuminates, chases away the darkness.

The flame of reason.

That’s how I immediately read this painting as it came to its completion.  It has a real feeling of underlying darkness and the way the tree sat with the light breaking over the horizon really enhanced the feeling of the tree as a flame, burning away the dark.

I’ve been spending a lot of time the last few days looking at this 16″ by 20″ canvas.  There is a real, active sense of hope in this painting, a feeling that reason can endure and prevail through dark times.

Let’s hope…

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And There is a New Day…

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , on October 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »

And the New Day Approaches...This is another new piece that I’m calling  And There is a New Day…  It’s a 24″ by 30″ canvas and is in the obsessionist style that I have been primarily focusing on lately, which is closer to traditional painting than the usual style I have used for the past 13 or 14 years.

I really like the feel of this painting.  The underlying texture is such that it really allows the darkness to show through while still bearing lighter paints above.  This texture also gives a slightly ragged edge on the lines, which really alters the overall look.  It gives it a less controlled feel.  It reminds me , in a way, of some examples of German Expressionism and American Modernism of the  early 1920’s.  This piece still is more controlled than many of the pieces that it brings to mind but still has the give and take of light and dark that I so admire.

The theme of this piece is a familiar one for me.  There is sense of being caught in a pause, waiting for the onset of something.  A new day.  A new wind.  A new path.  In this case, it is light of the new day breaking over the horizon.  I like the way the light breaks into confetti-like dabs of color.  It creates a real vibrancy, a sense of movement forthcoming that is spreading over the sleeping village.  The houses have no windows or doors, as is usual for such pieces of mine.  I sometimes think the absence of the doors and windows symbolizes sleep in my paintings but I’m not really sure if that’s all I really see.  There are other times when I think they symbolize a general inward turning, an introversion where there is no awareness of the outside world.  Sometimes, I just think I like the look without the windows or door.

I like that there’s a little mystery in that interpretation, even for myself.  The excitement in painting for me is in not knowing what will emerge.  The day that I know how everything in one of my paintings will turn out or be translated will be the last day I need to paint.

This painting makes me glad that I do still need to paint…

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On the Blue Canal

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , , on October 21, 2009| 1 Comment »

Blue Canal Pieces- GC MyersThese are two new pieces I recently completed, both 12 ” square canvasses.  They are in the same vein as several other paintings I have completed recently and featured here on the blog.

As I’ve stated before, these pieces are for me all about shapes and forms and color, more so than about an actual depiction of place.  I want to clarify that the feeling and sense of place that is created in these pieces is important to me.  But it is something that comes about as a result of the way forms and color fall together, rather than a premeditated plan for the composition.

The canal in these pieces is very important with that bright blue counterpoint to the red of the roofs and the way it bisects the village.  I have tried using a more subtle color in the canal but that blue pop! makes each painting stand out.

I have considered keeping these pieces together as a set, which is something I have done in years past, but I probably will not this time.

I had an interesting experience with a set of 3 very small paintings that were sold 11 or 12 years ago.  They were tiny landscapes, only about an inch and a half square in size.  They were, like the paintings above, not of any specific location but like many of my landscapes, influenced by the area around my home.  There is a spot on the way to Ithaca called Connecticut Hill that has an interesting look and feel that I often think of when I’m painting.

I met the buyer of this particular set one day at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA  as I was delivering some work and we spoke about the paintings.  He told me that he loved the way they reminded him of an area near he went to college.  I asked him where he had went.  He said Cornell, in Ithaca.  I asked him where this place was he had described.

He said Connecticut Hill.

He didn’t know that I was from near there when we spoke and there was little in those tiny pieces that would make me say they were of that place.  Just the feeling…

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Red Clay Halo

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged on October 19, 2009| 2 Comments »

994-305 Given to the Wind

I came across this piece in my archives from several years back with a title, Given to the Wind,  that I’ve used on a couple of paintings over the years.  The composition is also similar in it’s basic design to a number of pieces of mine, particularly from the time that this piece was completed, around 2004.

I’ve overlooked this painting a number of times when I’ve been scanning my records, not giving it  much mind.  Maybe the shape and ratio of it in my thumbnails didn’t allow me to see it as well as I would like.  But yesterday when I came across this, it was like seeing it for the first time, which for me is an odd thing.  I was really pleased with it, really felt it had a fullness, a sense of completion in all ways.  It was one of those pieces that didn’t stand out in my memory and didn’t live with me very long, having sold very quickly at a gallery, yet when I saw it made me very proud to call it my work.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say with this.  Sometimes I stumble upon something I’ve forgotten and am pleased to discover that it’s mine, pleased that it’s out there somewhere in someone else’s life.  I hope they are as pleased with this as I am.

Given that there is a guitar in this piece, I suppose I’ll have a little Monday music.  This is Red Clay Halo from one of my favorites, Gillian Welch. As she says, it’s a song about dirt.  I’ve always fancied myself a dirt man so this fits, although the clay around here is stony gray.

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Millet’s Gust

Posted in Influences, Painting, tagged , , , , , , , on October 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Millet- The Gust of WindIn reading yesterday’s paper, I came across an article describing an exhibition opening at the Everson Museum in Syracuse called From Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces of the Davies Collection.  It is in Syracuse until the beginning of next year when it moves to the Corcoran in Washington, DC.  The exhibit features works from many of the greats- Renoir, Monet and Van Gogh, to name a few.

The thing that caught my eye though, was this painting by Jean-Francois Millet, The Gust of Wind.  There was a real familiarity in seeing it and I immediately recognized the similarity of this piece with the compositions of a number of my paintings.  The tree blown to one side from the wind.  The way the tree sits at the top of the hillock.  Even the shape of the ground and the way it dominates the picture plane.

Of course, I could do this with many, many paintings by a variety of painters.  It’s a simple composition of a tree on a rise, after all.  But because it was Millet, it struck me because I have always so admired his work and often felt a kinship to it.  As a youth, a piece of his at our local museum, the Arnot, was always a favorite.  His paintings of field workers always drew me in with their sweeping fields and expansive skies.

Millet- The SowerAnd then there was The Sower.

The Sower was arguably Millet’s most famous image, a simple depiction of a farmer spreading seed.  It has great motion and a  beautiful diagonal line through the sower’s body.  Like the painting above, there has always been a sense of familiarity with this image.  I have memories of a pair of bronze bookends from my childhood, probably from a garage sale and now long lost, that had the image of The Sower on them.  Something in that figure clicked in me even then and I have always responded when seeing it.

This image was further immortalized by Van Gogh in several of his paintings, one a pure copy albeit in his own distinctive style.

Millett After Van GoghMillett's Sower Van Gogh

Seeing Millet’s figure in Van Gogh’s paintings made a huge impression on me many years ago.  It triggered a chain of creative impulses that I still feel to this day.  Seeing The Gust of Wind in the paper brought them back to the surface for me and I may well be working off this little surge of inspiration for weeks or months to come.

So, if you get a chance check out the exhibit and the Millet…

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Good Soldiers

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, Technique/History, tagged , on October 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »

BrushesI was looking at the brush in my hand the other day and I realized how rough I am sometimes on my brushes.  It was a natural bristle brush that was new just a few weeks ago, when it looked like the brush to the far left in the photo.

Over those few weeks, I caressed paint on to canvas.  I also pushed paint into the canvas.  I ground the paint against the canvas, using a lot of force, to almost burnish the surface.  I stroked.  I poked.  And when I looked down the brush had turned into that poor guy shown second from the left.

I can be rough on my brushes.

For my normal wet technique I use a natural hair squirrel mop like the two shown on the right.  It’s a big, soft brush that holds a lot of paint and is a staple in my studio.  The brush on the left is new and the one on the right is obviously not.  This erosion of the bristles shown here represents about 6 or 7 months of use.

Hard use.

I like the way the bristles whittled themselves down to the angle my hand takes when I normally strike the painting surface.  Unfortunately, it has eroded to a point where its capacity to hold paint makes it a hindrance to my technique.  So he is put aside and maybe I will find a use for him at some point, so I keep him with my other spent brushes.  I could never throw such  loyal workers to the trash heap.

I have amassed quite a number of brushes, both well used and brand new, over the years.  I have tiny detail brushes that I go through quickly.  I have  some cheapy brushes that work perfectly well for certain techniques.  I have some of my favorite medium priced brushes that I have stockpiled because they’re no longer made.  I also have some pretty expensive brushes.  I have a set of beautiful Winsor & Newton Series 7  brushes that are handmade with soft, luxurious Kolinsky sable.  I’ve had them for about 13 years and have only used one or two of them for a few minutes.  They’re lovely in the hand but I never felt comfortable with them and just wouldn’t feel right grinding them roughly into the surface.

So they sit and wait for a day when I’m ready to put them in the game.

Maybe today?  Maybe… but probably not.

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High Windows

Posted in Influences, Painting, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , on October 7, 2009| 2 Comments »

High WindowsAfter working on the large painting whose progress I have been chronicling, I moved back to a few pieces that were incomplete and needed the final touches to come alive.  This is one , a fairly large canvas measuring 30″ by 40″, painted in the same obsessionist manner as my recent work.  This piece has a lot of things working for it- the way all of the landscape elements converge at the center, the pull of the alternating rows of the field, etc.

But the sky is the obvious star of this painting is the vivid sky.  It has a real glow in the studio and my eye is always pulled to it.  It is just calling for one’s attention.  The sky is intentionally comprised of built up layers of colorful daubs of paint.  I wanted the sky to have that appearance of the sky coming apart, separating into individual lights sources.  The result is a really active sky, full of movement, that is a dynamic backdrop for the quietness of the landscape below.

As I was finishing it, I began thinking of the colorful daubs of color in the painting as being stained glass windows, kind of suspended in the sky.  That reminded me of the poem, High Windows, from the late British poet Philip Larkin.  It’s an interesting poem, one that seems full of cynicism at first glance, almost rejoicing in the loss of reverence in the world.  But the last few lines have the cynic dissolving into a sort of new awe and  reverence for the immense unknown, which are symbolized to him by high windows.  That is the same immense unknown I see in the sky of this painting, which is now titled High Windows.

Anyway, here is the poem from Larkin.  I’m also enclosing a video that has the voice of Larkin reading his poem.  It’s always interesting to hear the author’s reading of the words, his rhythm and cadence.  Gives you more of an idea of his aim in writing the piece.  Hope it works for you…

High Windows


When I see a couple of kids

And guess he’s fucking her and she’s

Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,

I know this is paradise


Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives–

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side

Like an outdated combine harvester,

And everyone young going down the long slide


To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if

Anyone looked at me, forty years back,

And thought, That’ll be the life;

No God any more, or sweating in the dark


About hell and that, or having to hide

What you think of the priest. He

And his lot will all go down the long slide

Like free bloody birds. And immediately


Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:

The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

—Philip Larkin

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Final Version? WIP

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on October 6, 2009| 5 Comments »

Final Version (?) GC Myers 2009Well, here’s what I’ve come up with for the painting that I’ve been working on over the past two weeks.  I added one window, on the central structure (thanks, Brian, for the suggestion) and went with twisting bare trees on the ridge to mirror the road.  I also added a little more light in the central section.

And there it is.  So far.

There is always the possibility that over the next week or so I may change it in some small way, a highlight here or there.  Just little tweaks to fine tune the weight of the piece.  When I say weight I refer to the way I look at the painting as though it were suspended from a center point in the painting and each visual element to either side of that point added weight, causing the painting to lean to the side with more visual weight.  I try to keep the painting centered and balanced on this center point, changing the weight on each side by adding elements or enhancing those that are there to create more visual interest, by which I mean weight.

Thus far, I like this piece a lot.  It has a lot of wallop in the studio with its size, 42″ high by 60″ wide, and its masses of bright red roofs.  The feeling of the piece has evolved over the process.  I originally felt that the focus and feeling of the piece stemmed from the area where the sky met the far ridge.  But the simple addition of one tall window  brought the focus down lower to that structure and changed the complete impact of the piece, giving it a feeling of warmth beyond the warmth of the colors.  Human warmth.

So that is basically how I paint in my additive  or obsessionist style, which is quite different  that my typical pieces which are reductive, which means I add lots of paint in a liquid fashion then pull paint off the surface to reach my desired end.  I may or may not show that in the future.

So this piece will stay with me for a few more weeks in which time, when I am fully satisfied of its completion, it will  be varnished then framed.  I use an archival quality varnish with UV protection to prevent fading from normal light over the coming years.  I usually use a gloss because I like the added brilliance and depth it adds.  The frame comes from my good friend Stephen who has built my frames for about the last twelve years.  He generally uses native poplar which gives a fine grain which beautifully accepts the stain that I apply after receiving the raw frames from him.   I will talk more about framing in a later post.

The final step is applying a title to the painting.  I have a few ideas but am open to suggestions.  No contest this time although there may be another in the near future.

But for now, if you have any ideas, let me know…

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Getting Close Now- Work In Progress

Posted in Neat Stuff, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, Television, tagged , , on October 2, 2009| 6 Comments »

GC Myers 2009 adding BlueWell, this painting, a 42″ by 60″ canvas, is closing in on what may be its final appearance, at least in my head.  I have the sky close to where I see it finishing, the village only needs some highlights here and there  and the landscape is basically set in place.

My next move is to move into the last large area that needs paint- the waterway and the land on either side of it.  I first go in with a manganese blue, a rich color that I can play off as I move along.  I often use blue for water even though it seldom appears that way in nature.  There seems to be a childish element that allows us to imagine or see blue as water.  For me, it goes back to how the color plays off the other colors.  The harmony produced is more important to me.  I also start adding color to the bridge at this point, although I see it changing in color over the rest of the process.

GC Myers 2009 Nearing the Finish LineFrom there it’s on to putting some color into the lower segment of landscape around the waterway and the structures.  I start with a dark Hunter green which actually darkens this space with a real earthy almost black green tone.  I like the way this sets everything off but am feeling it’s a little too deep and dark, almost flat in dimension.  I think that I probably lighten this soon but I first transition back into the water where I start laying in a lighter blue over the darker manganese underneath.  There is a bit of violet mixed with the blue I’m using which warms the blue just a bit.  I feel like I’m close to where I want this to be at this point but there is still a little work ahead, especially on the water and the bridge.

I start by lightening the bridge so that it has more contrast against the blue of the water.  I want contrast but not so much that the eye settles there.  I next begin adding a little depth in the green of the landscape with a mix of cadmium orange and yellow, once more put on with a light, dryish brush.  The  technique with the brush is as though I’m dusting something off the canvas with short, quick strokes, leaving only a residual of pigment.  This little bit of color atop the green makes a huge difference and I take this same color and technique into the water, really lightening the color so that it has a violet-slatey color, much less blue than it started.  Here’s where I am:

DSC_0106 smallSo I’m near the end and I really like the feel so far with this painting- but…  There’s always a but.

But I really feel it needs one more element beyond the village to bring it all together.  A real object of focus.  Like the tree or trees I mentioned in yesterday’s update.  Or I could take one of the larger, centrally located structures and put even more highlight, more brightness on it.

I’m leaning toward the tree but this is the part of the process where the painting sits for a while in the studio and I look at it over the next several days.  I’m consciously weighing all the elements in the painting to see if there is balance in the structure.  Does it hold together as a composition and do all the elements and lines make sense, not make me stop and wonder why this is here or that is over there?  As it stands, does it convey a wholly realized emotional feeling?  Lots of questions.

So, I’m at a terminus and just have to put in some mind time.  Soon it will be done…

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