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Archive for the ‘Quote’ Category

The Upward Gaze

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on October 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- The Upward Gaze smAstronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
–Plato

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I have painted a couple of paintings this past year that have featured an observatory propped upon a hill.   I like the idea that this building has a shape and a location that instantly defines it, making it almost symbolic of the desire to transcend this world that it contains.  This desire to transcend, to know more, is built within us and we  seek these existential answers in many ways, sometimes in the stars and sometimes in the spiritual.  Others seek these answers in other worldly ways, either through love , pleasure or labor, among many other things.

These different ways of searching  are what I think is the central theme of this new new painting, The Upward Gaze, a 20″by 24″ canvas that is part of my November show, Alchemy, at the Kada Gallery.  The observatory is there resting high above the other buildings as it looks for the celestial answer: where have we come from?  Then there is the a church with a steeple that is pointing upward seeking an response from above to its question: where are we going?  On the lower left there is a barn among the fields which for me symbolizes the question: what is our purpose here?  The Red Roofs of all of the buildings here act as indicators, each pointing upward.

The road heads outward from this group of building, moving  toward and disappearing before  the horizon, over which an all-knowing  sun/moon hovers among a mosaic sky.  The soft,broken colors of the sky feel like light particles to me, the energy that propels this whole thing.

It’s a seemingly simple painting but I think there is much more to it…

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Alchemy

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , on October 8, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers--Alchemy

“This is why alchemy exists,” the boy said. “So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold.

That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”

— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

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I am currently getting ready for my final solo show of the year, this one at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA, opening November 16th.  I am calling this show Alchemy, from the ancient and mysterious practice ( I use the word practice to describe it because I am not sure how to categorize it as it is not really a science as we know it) that is defined by its stated goals of turning base metals into gold or silver and creating an elixir that would give man’s life great longevity, possibly immortality.  Most of  us  likely think of it in terms of some wild-eyed scientist trying to find a way to transform lead into gold.

But at the heart of alchemy is the simple concept of the transformation of something ordinary into something more than it initially appears to be.  That really strikes home for me.  I have often written of  sometimes feeling surprised when I finish a piece, as though the end result, the sum of my painting, is often far more than what I have to personally offer in terms of talent or knowledge.  Like there is a force beyond me that is arranging these simple elements of this work into something that transcends the ordinariness of the subject or materials or the creator.  This feeling has remained a mystery to me for almost twenty years, driving me to write here in hopes of stumbling across words that would adequately describe this transformation of simple paint and paper into something that I sometimes barely recognize as being my own creation, so marked is the difference between the truth of the resulting work and my own truth.

Even as I write this, I can see that my words are inadequate to describe this vaporous process.  So I will stop here but will  attempt to better capture the mystery of this in the next several weeks in this blog.

The painting at the top is the title piece, Alchemy,  for the upcoming show.  It is 18″ by 48″ on canvas.  I wanted the painting that carried this title to have the things that I think make up this curious transformation– simplicity and symmetry and depth.  I think this painting captures these elements and even as I painted it, it started a transformation that continually surprised me.  I sit now  writing this and this painting sits on an easel in my studio and I am still surprised, even after all of these years, at what has emerged.

It must be alchemy…

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Exiles: Quartet

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Quote, tagged , , , on October 2, 2013| 5 Comments »

Exiles--QuartetWe all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.

—Albert Camus

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I have written about and showed a number of the pieces from my early Exiles series here on this blog.  It was a very important group of work for me in that it was the first real break towards forming my own voice, creating and displaying work that was emotional for myself.  It was also the work that spawned my first solo show in early 1997.

The inspiration for this work was mainly drawn from the experience of watching my mother suffer and die from lung cancer over a short five or six month period in 1995.  Her short and awful struggle was hard to witness, leaving me with a deep sense of helplessness as I could only wish that there was a way in which I could somehow alleviate her pain.  Most of the work deals with figures who are in some form of retrospection or prayer, wishing for an end to their own suffering.

But another part of this work was drawn from my own feelings of emotional exile, a feeling of estrangement in almost every situation.  I had spent the better part of my life to that point  as though I didn’t belong anywhere,  always on the outside viewing the world around me as a stranger in a strange land,  to borrow the words of that most famous biblical exile, Moses.  These figures were manifestations of that sense of inner exile that I carried with me.

Little did I know that these very figures would help me find a way out of this exile.  With their creation came a sense of confidence and trust in the power of my self-revelation.  I could now see that the path from the hinterlands of my exile was not in drawing my emotions more and more inward, allowing no one to see.  No, the path to a reunion with the world was through pouring this emotion onto the surface of paper or canvas for all to see.

This is hard to write and I am struggling with it as I sit here this morning.  I started writing this because I had been reconsidering revisiting this series, creating a new generation of Exiles.  But in pondering this idea I realized that the biggest obstacle was in the fact that I no longer felt so much a stranger in a strange land.  I no longer felt like the Exile, no longer lived every moment with these figures.  It turned out that they were guides for me, leading me back to the world to which I now feel somewhat connected, thanks to my work.

If there is to be a new series, they will most likely not be Exiles.

The piece shown here, Quartet,  is one of my favorites, a grouping of four figures.  You may not see it in these figures but the visual influence for this work were the carvings found on Mayan ruins of Mexico and Central America.  I myself see this mainly in the figure at the bottom right.

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Soft Dream of Night

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on September 25, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Soft Dream of Night smIf one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

–Henry David Thoreau

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This has long been one of my favorite pieces in the studio, a  14″ by 24″ painting on paper from 2002 called Soft Dream of Night.  It was part of the work that I completed in early 2002 in the aftermath of  9/11 .  It is considered part of what has been  referred to as my Dark Work.  It was work that I feel was very reflective of the feeling of that time and, as a result, was not as deeply embraced as my  typical work that has a more optimistic and forward-looking tone.  As a result, I was able to hold on to several pieces from that group which pleased me because they just felt so emotionally wrought to me that I liked the idea that they stayed in place.

This piece has evolved in feeling over the years for me, from a feeling of regretful, mournful retrospection to one that offers  the promise of a road forward, one that climbs through rich fields with the brightness  of  the moon to light the way.  Though it has a darkness beneath its surface, it no longer feels dark in tone.  It has a confidence and positive feel that would not have come to mind eleven years ago.

Time often changes our perceptions on many things.  I like that this piece has evolved for me and was not forever mired in the memory and tragedy of that time.  Perhaps the darkness underneath this painting is that memory, always present.  But above, life moves forward and dreams are still lived out.

As it should be…

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Acres of Diamonds

Posted in Influences, Motivation, Quote, tagged , , , on September 20, 2013| 5 Comments »

Grass-Is-Greener“The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.”

—Earl Nightingale

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It’s funny sometimes what you take from an experience in your life.  At one point in my life I was in the retail car business, working at a Honda dealership both as a salesman and a finance manager.  In order to keep their sales staff engaged and excited about pushing their product, the management there would periodically send us to seminars with industry-specific motivational speakers and would also have sets of motivational tapes from other speakers that they would encourage us to listen to in our free time.  One of the sets of tapes was from a man named Earl Nightingale who had a deep and engaging voice that added a serious dimension to whatever he said.  As I listened to his tapes, my interest grew as he told his little tales and his lessons registered deeply within me.

One of his stories was a short retelling of a classic lecture  called Acres of Diamonds from Russell H Conwell (1843-1925), an interesting fellow who was a baptist minister, a lawyer, a philanthropist and the founder and first president of Temple University.  The lecture, one that Conwell delivered over 5000 times during his lifetime, made the point that the riches we seek are often right in our own backyards.  His tale is of an African farmer who sells his farm in order to go in search of diamonds and finds nothing but failure that ends with his suicide.  Meanwhile, the man who took over the farm found an abundance of diamonds and ended up with one of the largest diamond mines in Africa.

There were a lot of lessons to be learned from this tale but primarily  what I took away  was that I must leave the car business–it was not my backyard.   It was the place to which I had come in search of my own diamonds.  I had not yet, at that point, began to search my own backyard. I am not sure if that was the message that management had been hoping would sink in.  Or maybe it was.

The other part of Nightingale’s message was that you had to set a course, aim for a destination.  Everything was possible if you knew where you wanted to go and truly set your mind to it.  He gave a laundry list of great human accomplishments that were achieved once we put our minds and wills in motion towards their fulfillment.  That resonated with me.  I had seen many people over the years who seemed deeply unhappy in their lives and most had no direction going forward, no destination for which they were working.  They drifted like a rudderless boat on the sea, going wherever the strongest current took them without having any influence over this motion.

If you can name it, you can do it in some form.

As I said, it’s funny how things influence you.  It’s been about twenty five years since I heard those words but they still resonate strongly with me, even now.  I try to be always conscious of the goals I set, knowing that the mind and the universe will always try to make a way for the possibility of achievement.

 

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GF Watts’ After the Deluge

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Quote, tagged , , , , on September 16, 2013| 4 Comments »

Julia Margaret Cameron- Whisper of the Muse-Portrait of GF WattsI came across this photo from Julia Margaret Cameron, a Victorian era  British photographer whose work I find tremendously interesting and forward leaning.  I have featured her work here before, with photos titled Sadness and Iago.  This photo from 1865 is titled Whisper of the Muse/Portrait of GF Watts  once again shows off the painterly eye that marks Cameron’s work as she portrays the renowned painter of the time amid two young girls.

I liked the image and it piqued my interest as to GF Watts‘ work.  I had heard the name but couldn’t recall his work so I decided to give a quick look.  An interesting guy, one who fell from favor at one point after his death and has found renewed interest.  Some of his work is Pre-Raphaelite in its appearance, very appealing and beautiful but falling into the genre to the point it became hard to distinguish it from other painters working in the same time.

But there was a piece that really captured my eye.  Titled After the Deluge (The Forty-First Day) it is an almost abstract depiction of the world after the biblical flood, the sun dominating in bursts of warm tones .  It was such an anomalous and powerful piece, more Van Gogh and modern in feel than Pre-raphaelite.  It evokes Mark Rothko, to bring it even further into the future. I found it just amazing.  It was on display at the National Galleries of Scotland last year in an exhibit titled Van Gogh to Kandinsky/ Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880-1910.  This is how they described Watts’ work:

George Frederic Watts took his role as an artist to a high calling, stating: ‘I paint ideas, not things’. For him, landscape provided elements which he could transform to project profound meaning via natural grandeur, as in his large, imposing painting After the Deluge: The Forty-First Day. This simple image – a vast sun hanging over an expanse of calm, unbroken water – is far from a mere sunset; it evokes the cosmic energy of a star.

I love the quote– I paint ideas, not things.  Something to hold to.  Here’s the painting in question:

george_frederic_watts_after_the_deluge

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Exiles: Cain/ Redux

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Quote, tagged , , , , , on September 13, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- CainI brought up a reference in last week’s Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery that I would share here again.  It’s about a posting that appeared here about five years ago, one that focused on one of the paintings from my Exiles series from around 1995.  It’s a painting that I would never part with for many reasons but mainly for the meaning it holds for me in changing the course of my life at one point.

In 2008, I wrote:

I thought I’d take a moment and show this painting, Cain, another from the Exiles series that I’ve discussed in past posts.  This is a smallish piece and one of my favorites, one with which  I will never part.

He is based, somewhat, on the biblical story of the original exile, one expelled from his homeland after slaying his brother  to create a new world for himself, never to return.  It is also based on the novel Demian by Hermann Hesse, a book that meant much to me when I went through a trying time years ago.  Actually, it seems a lifetime ago.

In Demian, Hesse uses the mark of Cain as a symbol for those seeking the truth in themselves.  He also discusses the dual nature of man, an idea which has had a very formative aspect in my growth as a painter.  The idea of opposing forces, light and dark,  being contained in one element, one being, always struck a chord in me.  It made sense of the struggles that I observed in myself and many others.

He also made a statement that resonated like a gigantic bell tolling for me.

Whoever wants to be born, must first destroy a world.

Without going into detail, that small sentence was a revelation.  It changed my world forever.

I realize this is a fragmented explanation of this painting and the book that influenced it.  I merely wanted to illustrate what personal meaning some pieces can have for an artist as well the serendipitous nature of moments when art and one’s real life converge.

Maybe I will elaborate in the future.  Maybe not…

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The Pride of Labor

Posted in Biographical, Quote, tagged , , on September 2, 2013| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- The Task Met smallIf a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Another Labor Day is here.  On this blog in the past I have bemoaned how the general public has forgot how much it owes to the labor movement, how the middle class that was the pride of this country during the middle of the last century was a direct result of hard fought gains from workers who banded together and stood against social injustice.  But today I just want to speak briefly about taking pride in one’s job, the same sentiment reflected in the quote above from Martin Luther King, Jr.

When I was a waiter in a pancake house, even after I had started showing my work in several galleries, I was always a waiter first when I was at my job.  Never a painter-slash-waiter, a title which served no purpose.  Circumstances had put me in this place at this time and I had determined that if I had to be there I would give it my complete attention and effort.  I would make it my own.  If I disliked it so much that it made me miserable, I would do something about changing my job when my day there was done and the task before me was complete.

 But while I was there, I treated it as though it were my destiny because, who knew, maybe it was.  I took great pride in being good at that job and some other jobs that I’ve done that could be classified as menial.  What was the cost in doing this?  If I had to be there then I would rather be recognized for my excellence rather than my misery.

Simply put, take pride in the task before you, however menial you see it.  Treat it as your destiny because in that very moment, it is.

Have a great Labor Day and remember what the day stands for.

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Step Forward

Posted in Current Events, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on August 14, 2013| 1 Comment »

GC Myers-Step Forward By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.

–Mikhail Bakunin

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There has been a lot of talk over the last few days about the new form of transportation proposed recently by entrepreneur-inventor Elon Musk, the man behind PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX.  His idea is to have people shooting all over the country in a larger ( and more sophisticated) version of the vacuum tube system that you might see at your local bank’s drive-through, where the transaction is placed in a receptacle by the driver of the car and , once placed in the tube,  it is whisked with a whoosh to a waiting teller in the building.  Musk’s claims that you could shoot from San Francisco to LA in about 30 minutes, reaching speeds of around 700 mph in the tube.

It’s not a mind-bending idea in itself.  I mean, haven’t you wondered about the possibility as you sit waiting at the bank’s drive-through?  I know I have.  No, it’s not the idea but the sheer scope of such a project that raises eyebrows.  We look for any reason to not move ahead with big and bold innovative projects now.  The idea of pursuing the seemingly impossible, that trait that defined our last century, has for the most part disappeared from our psyche.

All you hear is how this project cannot succeed. And maybe the naysayers are right.  But at least there is a tap in this idea into the creative mind, the wellspring that allows us to dream bigger, something we seem to be backing away from.   But our world faces big challenges that require big ideas and big dreams.  Maybe this is not the ultimate answer to one of our challenges but kudos to Elon Musk for daring to dream big.

The painting at the top is in this same vein.  I see this piece as being about being bold and daring to step forward, away from the accepted normal.  Titled Step Forward, it is a 36″ by 24″ canvas that is part of my ongoing West End Gallery show, Islander, that hangs for a few more weeks there.  I’ve had a surprising number of comments about this painting over the course of the show.  Hopefully,  that is a good sign for us all…

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You Are Here

Posted in Influences, Quote, tagged , , , on August 4, 2013| 4 Comments »

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

–Carl Sagan

Earth Seen From Dark Side of Saturn NASA-JPL-CaltechWhen I saw this recent photo taken from the Cassini  Spacecraft capturing Saturn and its rings as well as our own little blue speck of a planet, all I could think of was how utterly trivial my own worries and concerns were in the scope of all things.  I guess that can be a frightening thing, to feel so small and insignificant in relation to the universe, to realize that you are but a grain of sand on an immense beach filled with more grains of sand than you can possibly imagine.

 But to my surprise, I am not frightened.  If anything, I am pacified, knowing that  I am but a grain of sand subject to forces beyond my control.  And a grain of sand cannot alter the beach or stand up to the force of the ocean.  It goes where the tide carries it, where the wind blows it.

What good is worrying to a grain of sand?

So, go with the flow today.  We are all grains of sand and should enjoy our time on this beach while the sun shines down on us.

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