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Archive for the ‘Recent Paintings’ Category

Delivery Day

Posted in Music, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , on May 30, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- A Solemn Understanding smI’m on the road today, delivering my show to the Principle Gallery which opens next Friday, June 7th,  there in Alexandria,VA.  It’s always a big relief, physically and mentally, to just get the work out of the studio and into the gallery.  Physically, there is suddenly so much more space in the studio, fewer paintings grabbing at my attention.  It just feels airier.  Mentally, it’s much the same, as though the additional space and light  in the studio suddenly opens up  a bit more space in my mind.  I haven’t even left as I write this but already I am eager to be back at work, invigorated by the cleared space.

The painting above is A Solemn Understanding, a 20″ by 24″ canvas  that is part of this show.   It has very gem-like colors as well as a nice dark warmth and richness to it that gives it a sense of deep pondering, as if the secrets of the universe had  just been revealed to the Red Tree.

Well, I have to go but I thought I’d share a song from several years ago (2004 actually)  from Loretta Lynn‘s collaboration with Jack White on her CD, The Van Lear Rose.  This song, Portland, Oregon, always somehow makes it way to my playlist when I make this drive to Virginia.  Enjoy and stop into to see the work at the gallery if you’re in the area.

 

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Observers

Posted in Biographical, Personal Mythology, Recent Paintings, tagged on May 28, 2013| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- Observers frm smI am in the last stages of putting the finishing touches on the work for my Principle Gallery show before I deliver it later this week.  It’s always a thrill to see the work move from the raw image into its finished state, like seeing a raw gem put into a proper setting that focuses the light and color.  The piece above is a good example.  I showed it here  back in the first days of April in a fairly finished state but lacking the frame and the gold edge that surrounds each panel.  I really liked it then, liked the interaction of the elements and the way the color popped off the wood panel.

But these finishing touches have really transformed it for me.  Though it is pretty large, measuring in at about 28″ by 52″, it seems larger and demands the eye more than before.  Amazing how how little things can change the whole effect and feel.

Like the show, this piece is called Observers.  I think many many of us are observers, those people never quite in the middle of things, just off to the side as they watch the action take place.  They never have much control over and seldom set the course of anything but note how it proceeds. Some members of this group, artists and writers among them,  notice this as well, along with little details that give their accounts depth and meaning.  Things like how the light was and what the air smelled like at certain moments, the facial expressions and body language of those around them.  Things like patterns and shapes and quality of color in the environment of the moment.

Growing up, I often felt like I was watching things from a distance, never in the center of things.  Oh, I had those moments of being the center of attention.  I was the baby of our family and at times got more attention than I warranted.  But often  I felt like a third party watching things from the outside.  A lot of this came from spending a lot of time in the adult world, kind of a tagalong.

I remember spending several days one spring break when I was maybe 9 years old at my aunt’s house.  My cousin and best friend of the same age was still in school as their spring break was a week later than ours so I didn’t have him for companionship.  While he was in school I would go to work with my uncle who was a water well driller.  I just followed along for several days, not saying much and just watching his world.  I still remember vividly the coldness and thickness of the mud we slogged around in  around the drilling site.  I remember the smell of the cheese and dried blood in an old country store where we stopped to grab some lunch, a rich cheddar stench that blossomed when the proprietor pulled the heavy glass cover off the huge cheese round.  I remember the small glass of soda with the huge ice cubes that I drank at the tavern while I stood next to him at the bar, all the time reading the goofy plaques behind the bar with risque quips and jokes on them.  I can still see the lettering and words of those plaques and my uncle’s face when he asked me what I was smiling about.  I pointed out the one that had something to do with male genitalia and itching (that’s all the info I’m sharing about this although I remember it well) and he chuckled and told me not to read so much.

It wasn’t much fun for those few days but the memory is vivid and there is something there that I hold on to.  I think that is what observers do , hold onto fleeting bits of memory and detail.  And that’s a bit of what I  see in this work.

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The Bridge

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on May 24, 2013| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- The Bridge

This is another new painting that is headed to the Principle Gallery  for my new exhibition, Observers, which opens there June 7, two weeks from today.  This piece , which I call  The Bridge, is 8″ by 18″ on paper.  The small bridge between the two masses is a variation on the island theme  that has figured prominently in my work recently.

There are probably multiple interpretations for this image.  With a single I look   I can read it in several different ways but the one that sticks with me is seeing the bridge as that connection between the two poles of our individual selves, that link that both connects and differentiates our opposing forces. The  masculine and feminine.  Our good and not so good impulses.  Maybe  even life and death.

In this way it reminds me a bit of the corpus callosum in our brains, the bridge of neural fibers that connects the two hemispheres and transmits information between them.  It allows the two sides to function as a single, efficient unit- – well, somewhat efficient on good days– and in some cases when there is a problem on either side where function is impaired allows that function to migrate to the other side .

As my not-so-efficient brain struggles to write this ( and believe me, it is a struggle) I am bombarded by other ways of seeing this piece.  I really like that it has a multitude of ways of being seen.  I am going to stop and just look at it for a few moments.  Have a great day!

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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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Hypnos

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on May 17, 2013| 10 Comments »

GC Myers Hypnos 2013 smIn my last entry here, I wrote about talking to a couple of  art classes at a local high school.  I took a number of unframed paintings, something I normally don’t do because I really prefer that my work is always shown in a finished state with frames and mats, if the piece is on paper and  going under glass.  I’m a big believer that the work should be shown in its best possible setting in a way  that there is no distraction away from the focus of the work itself.  But I wanted these kids to be able to see the work in a more basic state, closer to their own work and experience.  The same way I see it in the studio.

There was one piece that was partially done, the composition completed in red oxide as was  the sky, a swirl  of many colors around an eye-like sun (or is it a moon?)  One of the things I wanted to do with this piece was to pass it around the class and allow the kids to get a better sense of the tactile nature of it.  I wanted them to be able to run their hands over it, to let the texture of the surface register on their hands.  This gives you a different sense of the work, no longer feeling like a distant scene but more like an object to hold.  Just looking at art from a different perspective sometimes changes our perceptions of it.

That painting, a 20″ by 24″ canvas,  is shown at the top in a more complete state, now titled Hypnos.  The focus of the piece is definitely, for me,  in the spiral colors of the sky.  It reminds me of  one of those  pinwheels that cliche hypnotists might use on a crummy TV show.  But it doesn’t have that goofy factor and indeed has  the effect of pulling in your attention in a mesmerizing manner.

This piece has changed quite a bit in the day since it went under the hands of those kids.  Mainly, the colors have deepened and transformed from the flat hues of the initial layers to ones that give it added depth and form  above the texture of the surface.   I think there’s a nice harmony here, a quietness in the abstraction of the forms that plays well to the title.  But the texture of the whole surface is the attraction for me.

I think I’m going to finish this up   and  go run my hands over it right now…

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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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Strands

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

GCMyers- Strands smHere’s a new piece for my upcoming Principle Gallery show, a 6″ by 22″ painting on paper, that I call Strands.  It has a series of pools climbing upward toward another pool (or lake or sea) that has a distant horizon line while the Red Tree looks on from a hummock.  I’ve used this theme of  rising pools in the past year and find something really appealing in it, both from a design and an interpretive perspective.

I call this piece Strands because of the dual nature of the word strand, which can either be the land adjoining a body of water or a thin fiber.  The land part is obvious here but it is actually the path running upward between the pools that caught my eye.  I began to see the land here as representing the whole of the land forms on Earth and the pools as both the actual  bodies of water of the Earth as well as the genetic pools which we all sprang.  The path then became a connector between these pools, these beginnings of people.  Like a strand of DNA with the fields alongside acting as markers that designate an individual’s makeup.  The larger body at the top takes on greater significance, representing the infinity of time and space in its horizon.

Of course, as always, I must point out that this is just my own reading of this painting and even that is only conditional.  Sometimes, I look at this piece and  simply see a pleasant landscape with pleasing colors and forms.  And that is certainly good enough for me.

Maybe a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, as Freud is reported to have said.

Hey, this painting is shaped like an upright  stubby cigar.  Or is 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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Running Free

Posted in Current Events, Recent Paintings, tagged , on April 21, 2013| 6 Comments »

GC Myers- In the ZoneIt’s hard to imagine that it’s been less than a week since the Boston Marathon bombing and all that followed.  It seems as though that so much has occurred that six days could not possibly hold it all.  I normally don’t do work that is topical in any manner and, to be quite honest, when I was finishing this piece I wasn’t even consciously thinking about the Boston bombing.  In fact, it was quite the opposite– I was working to shut out the emotion of the events.  it was only after finishing that I realized that there was some relevance in this piece, an 8″ by 16″ painting on paper that I call Running Free.

I originally thought that this would be a simple Red Tree piece, just the tree set against a fragmented sky.  Quiet.  Placid.  But I inadvertently started with a block that didn’t run level, giving it a sloped appearance.  As I worked on the sky, I thought about the challenge that the slope offered, an obstacle to overcome much like a runner looks at a hill.  I felt that  a runner moving up this slope was a good metaphor for the obstacles that we all at some point  take on and overcome.

The way the upper section– the sky– finished left a larger block that seemed to be a perfect  spot to place my runner.  Safely isolated, much like a runner might feel when they are in mid run and have blocked out the external.  In the zone, which was also the first title that came to mind in the aftermath of finishing this piece.

But looking at it I realized there was a connection to last Monday’s events, one that I had never intended.  The term freerunner came to mind  but that is so connected with the guys who run and jump their way through urban landscape that I opted for the simple Running Free.  All I could think of was of those people who challenge themselves with their running and find a release, a freedom, in it.  Who find sanctuary of a sort in going inward as they block out everything but their own thoughts and the road ahead of them.  And how that safe haven was invaded last week.

But runners are by nature strong-willed and will not be intimidated by cowardly acts.  I’m looking forward to seeing images of the runners streaming through London today as they run their marathon there  in defiance of those who seek to take away their freedom and their security.  May they continue to  run free…

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