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Archive for the ‘Recent Paintings’ Category

Visionary

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , on June 28, 2010| 2 Comments »

This is a painting finished for my next exhibition which opens July 22 at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY.  This show, which I am calling New Days, is my tenth annual solo show there, something I never envisioned when I began showing there in the early part of 1995.  At that point, I was amazed that anyone would even want to look at my work,  let alone buy it.  I was simply happy to hang my simple paintings on a wall and have somebody see them, which is still remains a thrill today.

This painting, a 24″ by 30″ canvas, is titled Visionary.  I’ve lived with this piece for a while and there’s a lovely depth into the painting and a golden hue around it that keeps my eye coming back to it.  An almost mystical pull.  It has sat untitled for all this time but this morning, the word visionary came to mind. 

Maybe it’s the distance between the houses in the foreground and the single tree in the distance but I am reminded of the vision quests of many indigenous people in many lands, a rite of passage where a young person of the tribe is sent alone into the wilderness, with the idea that the isolation and the deprivations (fasting is often part of the ritual) will attune them to their true self and their place in the natural world.  This quest is similar to those taken by the tribesmen who have been called forth as shamans although their journey is often enhanced by hallucinogens.

Either way, the idea is to shed all the trappings of their safe life and tap into a mystic energy in nature, confer with the spirits.  Unite with the eternal.  To see the remarkable behind the mundane.

Much like the visionary who, in all cultures, steps away from the safety of what is normal and stands alone.  Their viewpoints may seem far away and improbable, easily brushed aside.  But sometimes, their visions become evident to the normal world and we are grateful for their ability to see beyond what is now to what can be.  Grateful for their self belief and fortitude in stating their visions even though they may realize the risk of derision.

Maybe in this piece, the visionary, as represented by that far tree, is able to see the true nature of light and color as it breaks into pieces in the sky above.  To us, the inhabitants of the houses, it seems but a mere sky.  To the tree, the visionary, it seems to be comprised of unseen forces, the defining elements that make up all things.  He sees deeper, far beyond our shorter sight.  And he seeks to make it known to us.

Well, maybe that’s what I mean by this piece.  Somedays, it’s all a mystery to me…

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days pass in gray

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on June 22, 2010| 2 Comments »

I’ve been working on a series of pieces that are monochromatic but for small bursts of color.  It started as an exercise, just something to reboot my brain after finishing the show that’s currently hanging at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.  I wanted to think less about color and more about form, letting color emerge as the exercise went on.  I wasn’t sure what would show up but as these gray paintings took shape I was pleased by the overall feel.

They felt stripped down, detail peeled away leaving only the essence.  Haiku-like.  But still saying essentially what I wanted from them.

So after the show, which had a great response for this work, I decided to explore a bit more with this series.  It’s been interesting to revisit familiar compositions with this spartan palette, finding new definition in in the already known.  There is a different sort of challenge in trying to coax emotion from the limits of grays and blacks, keeping myself from going to my  strength, color.  For me, maybe that’s the appeal of these pieces- that tension of restraint.

This painting is Days Pass In Gray and is definitely familiar in form.  With full color, this piece is an iconic image of strength and perseverance-  a celebration of triumph almost.  But stripped of color except for a touch of red in the tree’s canopy it becomes a different view of perseverance.  There is a victory of sorts but it seems more hard-fought and the price paid is worn for all to see.  The red in the tree is a garland of victory but the tree realizes that the days don’t stop to celebrate any triumph but continue their steadfast march ahead. 

Time has the pitiless stare of the sphinx.

Maybe that’s too grim an assessment because I do see a joy in this painting as well, in the distant light on the far mountains.  It gives a certain hope to this piece that lifts it above the darkness that I wrote of above.  Perhaps that is what I enjoy about this work, the polarity of the emotions it pulls all at once from me. 

Maybe.  I don’t know.  I guess I’ll have to look a little more…

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Lifeblood

Posted in Influences, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , on June 17, 2010| 2 Comments »

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked throughout the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

———-Viktor Frankl

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I don’t know why this came to mind today but it did.  Viktor Frankl was an Auschwitz survivor who, after the war, created logotherapy, one of the important schools of psychotherapy alongside those of Freud, Adler and Jung.  It was a therapy based on finding meaning in one’s life, a reason to struggle onward.  In his best known book, Man’s Search For Meaning, he recounts his time in the concentration camp and how he and others who survived  seemed to have something in common– the discovery of a purpose and meaning in living.  It might be love. It might  be the will and drive to create.  Just something to set on their horizon to pull them ahead despite the horror around them.

Maybe it was this painting, Lifeblood,  that brought back Frankl for me.  I had come across his work a number of years ago and and his words and example have helped me through some desperate, foundering times of my own.  There is a certain power in knowing that we all are fated to suffering of some sort, just by the sheer nature of existence.  There will be pain, there will be death.  No one is exempt from the distresses of  life.  But these can be endured through the knowledge that we have the choice in how we react to such events, how we perceive the deprivations of our lives.  We can choose to wallow, to give in,  or we can forge ahead.

Maybe that’s how I see this painting, as a path through the pains of living, symbolized by the blood red of the ground.  All the leaves, everything it had,  have been stripped from the tree yet it still stands.  It reaches for the light above, seeks a meaning for its suffering. 

I didn’t see it that way when I first painted this.  It was simply color and form.  Simplicity and harmony.  But sometimes there’s an associative power to a piece that gnaws at you, begs you to look deeper and find what it’s trying to say.  And maybe the ideas of Viktor Frankl hide in this piece for me…

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Facets

Posted in Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , on June 12, 2010| 2 Comments »

Well, my show at the Principle Gallery, Facets, opened last night.  Wow! Was it ever great!?

Actually, I’m writing this Thursday afternoon so I have no way of knowing how everything turned out at the show.  I’m probably heading back up the highway as you read this but I will give you some details within the next few days. 

The painting shown here is actually the title piece for the shows, Facets.  It has a very stained glass feel and the sky is broken apart in a way that seems to section off the light from the moon/sun, giving me the title.  It’s a simple, pensive piece and one that I think works well with the concept contained in the title.

Here’s a little traveling or just hanging out music from Billy Bragg and Wilco‘s interpretation of Woody Guthrie’s lyrics for a song called Walt Whitman’s Niece. Enjoy your Saturday!

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Alive in the Gray Area

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , on June 11, 2010| 3 Comments »

Alive in the Gray Area- GC Myers

My show opens tonight at the Principle Gallery.  I head down the highway early in the day and settle into my hotel and relax for a short time before the opening.  Have a bite to eat and try to take my mind off the show.  I still have anxiety over the whole thing, as I talked about in yesterday’s post.  But it’s not so much of a panic after 25 or so solo shows. 

Just try to keep the flop sweat down and be grateful for those who show up.

Dancing in the Gray Light

This year, I’m bringing a couple of pieces with me on the day of the show.  They are two smaller paintings done in shades of gray and black with touches of color.  I started these this week as an exercise, sort of to clear my palette.  Go back beyond color then come forward again.  These were primarily done as such and were not meant to be shown but I found that they really appealed to me and gave a different flavor to my normal compositions.  Taking the focus off the color made my eye instead fall to subtlety of line and tonal differences in the grays.

It was still my work but I was seeing it  in a different way.  Like hearing a song you know very well played in a much different manner.  You recognize all the things about it that you liked in it normally but notice things that evaded you before.

That’s kind of how I feel about these pieces. 

So I decided to show them tonight if only to get a bit of feedback.

So if you’re in Alexandria tonight, stop in at the Principle Gallery and say hello. Maybe take a look around.  There’s plenty of color to go along with the grays…

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Connected

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , on June 10, 2010| 2 Comments »

 

Well, I’m basically set to head to Alexandria for tomorrow night’s opening of my show, Facets, at the Principle Gallery.  This is the eleventh year that I’ve done this show so I have an idea of how things usually go.  Not a lot of surprises.  Like they say, this ain’t my first rodeo.

But, despite this little burst of bravado, there is always a level of anxiety that accompanies these shows.  I’ve talked about it before in this blog.  The thought that I’ve misread my work and it doesn’t resonate with a larger audience always lingers in the days before a show.  That’s my biggest fear.  That and the fear that nobody shows up and I’m left standing with the folks from the gallery, me apologizing to them and them to me, all of us making rationalizations on what might have happened. 

Been there, done that.

This second scenario sounds worse, I know.  The awful awkwardness of it.  But the fear of midreading my own work and how it comes across to others looms far larger for me.  People not showing up, sales being up or down– things like that are usually the result of factors you can’t predict or control.  Weather.  Scheduling conflicts.  The economy.

But not seeing your own work as others might see it is a bigger problem, at least in my eyes.  I see my work as being successful when it’s communicating across a wide spectrum of people.  To me, art is all about communicating and connecting on an emotional level, getting across some feeling that I can’t capture in any other way but my imagery and having someone see and react to it in much the same way as I.  And when that doesn’t happen, I’ve misread my work in some way.  And when that happens, it’s like a sailor being adrift without a rudder or the stars to guide them.  Truly alone.

And that is a time of fear.

But those moments are rare, fortunately.  And I feel this show communicates well, reaches out in a broad way.

Connected, like the painting above of the same name, which is part of this show.  It’s a painting on paper that measures 18″ by 26″ and one that I think very much bridges the gap between the past and the present of my work.  I think that word, connected, says everything I want to say about this show.

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A Look to the Past

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , on June 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This is a new painting from the Facets show that opens Friday at the Principle Gallery.  It’s called A Look to the Past and is a 12″ by 18″ image on paper.

There are a lot of things about this piece that I like, that keep my eyes coming back to it and making me think about what I’m seeing.  For instance, the deep blue rise that  cuts in a diagonal slash across the foreground with the peering red tree atop it.  Its darkness plays well off the soft gold of the sky and its lazy clouds, giving it a sense of being a delineating point here, the transition between dark and light, the past and the present and other polarities in our nature.  Much like the dividing line in the yin-yang symbol.

The red tree seems to be part of both sides here, rooted in the dark blue and basking in the golden light.  It is in the present and in the past as well, which is represented by the softer palette of the greens and yellows of the landscape that moves deeper into the picture plane.  There’s a really nice interplay between the sharpness of the foreground and the softening of the background that gives the piece an interesting visual tension.

It just seems to come together well and provides a launching pad for many different interpretations and emotions.  I can read this piece in so many ways– hopeful, strong, sad, wistful, etc.   It’s a kind of barometer piece for ones own psyche and has a complexity that belies its simple appearance, something that gratifies and excites me when I see it in my work.   The ultimate aspiration for what I do…

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Advocate

Posted in Opinion, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on June 7, 2010| 4 Comments »

  Concerning this blog, a gallery owner once said to me, “You sure have a lot of opinions.”  I think they were concerned with the possibility of me  alienating one or more of their clients with my personal opinions.

“Everyone has opinions,” I replied. “They just don’t always express them.”

That short exchange may well be the basis for this painting, Advocate.  A 24″ by 36″ work on canvas, this is a new piece showing at the Facets show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA, which opens Friday, June 11th. 

 When I look at this piece I see the red tree as the advocate, standing up for an opinion that may represent that of the red roofed houses.  It’s as though there is an interchange happening between the tree and the light breaking through the fingers of the sky, the tree arguing for the light to shed aside the darkness and shine on the scattering of homes below.

Actually, while I do have as many opinions as anyone and  sometimes have an inability to keep them to myself when asked, I try to steer away from treading too much in this blog  on subjects that do not pertain to my work in some way.  Unfortunately, my work is a product of my emotions and my emotions are often stirred by things going on in this world.  So occasionally opinion on things that may not seem to have anything directly to do with the making of art creeps in. 

 This always leaves me a little uneasy.  Like the title of my show, I am a prism comprised, as we all are, of many and varied facets.  I show many of these aspects in my work and in this blog and I sometimes fear I am showing too much,  that once the viewer has gained enough familiarity with the work and me,  the mystery of the work will be gone.  So, I try to keep some of these facets out of the light of my visible prism.  Actually, I almost started listing these here as examples, which would kind of defeat the whole purpose of not showing them in the first place.

But the red tree of this painting is not afraid to show themself fully as it is, visible from every aspect.  It is vulnerably in the open yet it appears strong and definite in conviction, willing to face down anything that crosses its path.  It is a fully lit prism.

Maybe this is a case where a painting represents aspiration rather than reality…

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Gossamer Days

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on June 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Gossamer Days - GC Myers 2010

The studio is relatively empty now as I’m now in the week between delivering the Facets show to the Principle Gallery and the actual opening night this coming Friday.  While there is always anxiety over the show itself, there is usually a sense of relieved relaxation in the studio at this point, an almost giddy feeling over the possibility of what may come next there.  Usually at the end of painting for a show, all the creative energies  have come to a sharp, focused point and in the weeks of prepping the work for a show and the point when painting is resumed, this point is constantly poking me, impatiently waiting to be untethered.

At the moment, it wants to explore new ideas in sometime older styles.  For instance, the painting shown here, Gossamer Days, is painted in the more transparent manner of my early work and  provides me with a new spark each time I see it.  After years of having the work grow and evolve beyond this style, it’s always interesting to revisit it with the benefit of knowledge and insight gained through the years.  Something new and exciting emerges as new ideas are incorporated and older ideas that may have faded from my vocabulary are reintroduced.  For me, this an exciting time in the studio.

This discovery of things new and old keeps me always fully engaged, always feeling that the work is growing and not stagnant.  The idea of the work not moving forward is death in the energy of the studio and something for which I always on the lookout.  For the work to be vibrant and have its own sense of life, I must have a sense of engagement with and excitement for the work myself.  So, at points like this, when that excitement is almost palpable I am thrilled because I know the importance of it.  But I am always also a bit nervous of not capturing the full strength of this creative wind in my sails and being left adrift to paddle my way out by creating new energy somehow.

That is tough work…

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In the Golden Light

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , on June 3, 2010| 2 Comments »

I’m in the last days of preparation for my show, Facets,  that opens June 11 in Alexandria, VA at the Principle Gallery.  Today I put on the final few hanging wires on the backs of the paintings, finish the necessary paperwork and documentation then wrap and load the paintings for tomorrow’s delivery.

This is often a hectic, anxious day but this year I find it strangely calm thus far.  Maybe it comes from the relief of seeing the endpoint in preparations for this show or perhaps it comes from finally seeing this group of work together, now fully framed and moved from raw images into their now presentable form. 

 Often a piece, especially one on paper, undergoes a  startling transformation once it is put in a setting for presentation.  I think of the painting as a gem of sorts and the matting and framing as the setting that holds this gem and allows it to be seen in its best light.  Sometimes a piece takes on a sparkle, a different life even, when seen in the setting of its frame rather than as a raw image on paper.  I see this often with Cheri when she will see a painting in the studio before framing and give little response then will react so much more stronglyand positively after it is fully presented. 

Seeing this group together and fully presented gives it a wholeness and allows me to see the continuity in it that I knew was there, which is reassuring.  It looks like it will hang together well and the pieces will play well off one another, each exhibiting its own individual strength and acting as a complement to those around it, reinforcing them.  There is a great blend in this group of boldness and softness, strong colors and muted tones.  Like the name of the show implies,  this group shows many of the facets of the body of my work to date.

The piece above, In the Golden Light, is part of this show.  It is a work on ragboard and measures a little over 11″ by 25” and is matted and presented in a 20″ by 34″ frame.  I think it’s a prototypical example of my work, one that strikes close to the core of everything I want to show and say in my work.  It’s a painting that flowed out easily and gracefully near the end of the final days of painting for this show, almost as though it were the final performance after months of dress rehearsals.  There was no struggle with this piece and there was a sense of a type of destiny in it even as the first section of paint began to dry.  I can’t fully explain this.  I used the word gracefully earlier in the paragraph and there was a type of grace in the painting of this, an ease of motion and a confidence that I seek yet seldom find, in my work or in my life.

I think I can say the same for much of this group of work.  I think there’s an ease and a confidence in this work that arises from coming to terms with where I am as a painter, reveling in what I am and setting aside concerns about what I am not.   I think it comes through quite evidently  in this show. 

At least it does for me.  I can’t predict what others might see…

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