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Archive for the ‘Quote’ Category

The Stand

Posted in Influences, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , , on July 26, 2013| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- The Stand

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

— Marianne Williamson

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The quote above is an interesting example of how the internet sometimes creates its own mythology.   When I first came across this quote it was attributed in many places to Nelson Mandela, taken from his inaugural address in 1994.  That sounded right.  But I also saw that it was attributed to Marianne Williamson, the bestselling New Age guru.  And indeed, with just a short investigation, it was confirmed that Williamson was the author of this quote and Nelson Mandela had never uttered those words despite all those web followers who believed it so.

But regardless of authorship, it remains a good and inspirational quote.  I think it serves the painting at the top, The Stand, well as a description for what I see in it.  It is about letting your light shine and moving forward into a world of new possibilities.  Too often we are content to exist as less than we can be, to settle for a known mediocrity because we believe that the safety of this choice outweighs our desire for fulfillment.  Plus, it’s easier to stay put– no risk of stumbling in the spotlight and our friends are still there to commiserate.  Stepping up requires the risk of failure and the possibility of moving beyond those around you.

But, as the quote rightfully points out, we are doing no one a favor by denying our full potential.  Each of us serves as an example for those around us and to wallow in an unfulfilled life sets a bad example, denying inspiration to others.  No, we should dare to shine and let those around us look for their own potential in the light it provides.

There is a lot more that could be said here but I think brevity rules this day.  You can see this painting, The Stand, a 24″ by 48″ canvas, at the West End Gallery where my annual solo show, Islander,  opens tonight with a reception from 5- 7:30 PM.  I will be at the gallery so if you would like to stop out and talk for a bit, that would be great.  If not, come out anyway  to have a glass of wine and hear my friend Bill Groome play some wonderful parlor guitar music.  We’d love to see you there!

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Mirrors and Windows

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , on July 14, 2013| 7 Comments »

GC Myers-Mirrors and Windows

Maturity is that time when the mirrors in our mind turn to windows and instead of seeing the reflection of ourselves we see others.

–Anonymous

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This is a new piece for my West End Gallery show, Islander, that opens on July 26th.  I am calling this  painting, a 12″ by 36″ canvas, Mirrors and Windows.

It didn’t start with this title or the quote cited above in mind but as it progressed the lakes and sun/moon (your choice, although I am personally seeing a sun here) began to remind me of mirrors and the blocks of the  field reminded me of windows.  The terrain took on a pop or cartoon-like quality as though I were looking at a wavy  building  with curving windows and mirrors attached to its side.  The vibrant colors really accentuated this feeling.

I found myself looking at this piece quite often in the studio, trying to ascertain what it was that was pulling me in.  As I looked, I began to be more aware of the road running through which signified to me our life’s journey.  We spend our lives looking in mirrors and out windows, living in reflections of ourselves and the outer world.

There must be some perfect balance in this.  Somewhere.  Somehow.  And maybe that is what the quote at the top here infers, that we reach a point where we know who and what we are and turn away from mirrors and begin to look for windows in which we can expand our vision of the outer world and gain greater wisdom.

Perhaps this message is too much to ask from a painting that at first speaks with the look of a comic book.  I guess you should judge a book by the cover…

 

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Endymion

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on July 9, 2013| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Endymion This is a new painting that is part of my upcoming exhibit, Islander,  at the West End Gallery which opens on July 26th. It is a 20″ by 24″ canvas titled Endymion,  somewhat based on the mythic character of that name.  There are many conflicting myths as far as Endymion is concerned but the basic myth is that he was a mortal, some having either a king or a shepherd,   who was in  love with the Moon, who because of his beauty returned his love.  Some myths have Endymion in an endless state of sleep as either punishment or reward from Zeus, some with his eyes wide open as he slept but all maintain the love between him and the Moon.

The Romantic poet  John Keats wrote a poem titled Endymion that tells his version of the myth.  It begins with the well known line: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.  My favorite line, and one that I think speaks to this painting, comes later in that first stanza: Some shape of beauty moves away the pall  from our dark spirits.

Whatever the myth behind the poem or the title of this painting, there is a sleepy hypnotic quality to this piece and there is a real sense of attraction and longing between the Red Tree and the Moon here.  I see the Moon as the unattainable ethereal and the Red Roofed houses and farms as being the temporal reality with the Red Tree hovering somewhere in between, part of the Earth yet longing for the sky.

Well, at least that’s how I see it…

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“Islander”

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on July 5, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers Post Card 350 small

My annual show at the West End Gallery opens in three weeks, on July 26th.  This year’s show is titled Islander.  Below is a short statement that I wrote for this show:

 

I am an islander. 

But I don’t live on an island. Never have and probably never will. 

No, my island is a metaphorical place, one that exists in the creative ether of my mind. An island that is completely apart from and immune to the outer world that exists across the deep surrounding waters. Self-sustaining and self-ruled, a blank slate on which I can create my own reality. 

It’s a place free from the ire and pettiness of others. Free of strife and injustice. and filled with the quiet of solitude. Filled with color, warmth and emotion. 

An island of creation and peace. 

But there is a paradox in being an islander. While trying to remain separate, it becomes abundantly clear that we can never really exist as totally independent from the outer world. Actually, to the islander those bonds to the outside world become even more apparent and important. The isolation only serves to heighten our recognition of our inclusion and connection to the world. You begin to recognize them as lifelines, bringing those things to the island that you cannot create in yourself. 

Try as one might, one can never live in isolation from their own humanity. I think the best you can do is to create an island that you can visit periodically to revitalize yourself. And that’s what I believe I see in the work for this show– paintings that take me away for a short while from the outer world and place me on that peaceful island. 

For that short time, I am truly an islander.

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No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne

Meditation XVII, 1624

 

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Paul Strand Abstracts

Posted in Influences, Photography, Quote, tagged , , , on June 20, 2013| 2 Comments »

 

paul strand ny 1916No matter what lens you use, no matter what speed the film, no matter how you develop it, no matter how you print it, you cannot say more than you can see.

–Paul Strand

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I have featured the photography of Paul Strand here before, writing about his groundbreaking work in the early decades of the 20th century.  There is something about his work and his eye that is unmistakable, something that jumps from the surface.  When I saw this photo of a park in NY, here on the right, I knew immediately that it was Strand’s work.

I love this image, with the abstraction of the forms with the sidewalk forming a flowing diagonal through the picture plane.  The single figure in the lower third of the photo, cutting across the park in full stride,  becomes the focus for me, the soul of the picture.  He becomes the singular voice in a busy anonymous world.

Paul-Strand-The-Court-New-York-1924I think  the way in which he applies abstraction to the common forms in his work is wonderful and inspiring as an artist, something too many of us forget in our own work.  We become too concerned with simply capturing subject and not the emotion created in how that subject fits into its environment.  His best work speaks purely of emotion to me and he was able to find it everywhere.  As he said:  The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.

I think those are words to live by for any artist.

Paul Strand Abstraction Connecticut 1916

 

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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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Dark Crossing

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on April 14, 2013| 1 Comment »

GC Myers 2013“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”   

-Leonardo Da Vinci

 

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I’ve been working on a number of pieces lately that start on a black base of paint, rising from the darkness as each subsequent layer adds more and more light.  I still think of this additive  process as being a form of sculpture, one that starts with a flat surface and builds out in contours that give it definition and texture.  Each layer of paint is like adding clay to the supporting armature of the sculpture.  It’s a process that is hard to pull away from when I immerse myself in it. There’s something about seeing the colors grow more and more vibrant on the surface that becomes mesmerizing.  I guess that’s why I often refer to this work as obsessionism.

This small experiment, a 10″ by 12″ piece on paper,  is in this vein.   It’s one of those pieces that I’m just not sure about because I like it but I’m not sure if I like it for what it is or for the experience, the obsession of the moment in painting it.  Like a parent looking at something their child has done and wondering if they like it because it is truly good or simply because it was done by their child, their flesh and blood.  

Sometimes I can finish a piece and it instantly stands apart and on its own, complete and independent.  Ready to move on like a young person proclaiming their emancipation from their parents.   Other times, there are pieces that cling closer to me, perhaps too attached to yet  stand on their own, at least in my eyes.  Because I am unsure, I become more protective of these pieces because they do feel more personal, more of me.  

It’s a hard thing to describe, this uncertainty in a piece, especially when it feels objectively right.  Can a parent ever fully take out their own subjective view of their offspring and see them objectively as they really are?

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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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High Sign

					

					Posted in Influences, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , ,  on March 10, 2013|
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GC Myers -High Sign  Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.


— Ralph Waldo Emerson


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I think I understand what Emerson is getting at with these words.  I know that when I look around I often see juxtapositions of natural elements– trees and stone and water and sky– which move me in ways that I can never fully explain.  Some fill me with inspiration.  Some with a sense of wonder  and great calmness.  Peaceful unity with the world.  And, with some, a sense of foreboding, a dread of the inevitable valleys that accompany all peaks.  Even those scenes which make me feel as being “in the moment” resonate because they have some underlying  connection to a deeper strand of thought or being.


I think it’s this sense of this symbology that fills in some of the gaps in my work, that gives it a little more depth than the surface offers.  I know that it is this greater sense of being that I am trying to capture in my work, hoping that perhaps others who feel this same type of  innate symbolism in the natural world  somehow sense it and connect with it.


I think this newer piece, High Sign (6″ by 10″ on paper), is a good example of this.  It is a simple scene but, for me, is filled with symbolism.  Some is obvious and some subtle.   The tree and it’s position on the mound against the graded sky is obvious as is the road that winds through.  Less obvious are the upward pointing arrows of the houses’ peaks and the light and shadows of their walls.


The odd thing is that it’s not something I think about when I am painting the piece.  It’s all about achieving a sense of rightness in each move in the painting.  Each move is  step forward and if I can maintain  that feeling of rightness throughout the process, generally the painting will have this added depth, this layer of symbolism.  It comes of its own accord, naturally.   And I guess that the way it should be.

					
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