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Archive for the ‘Recent Paintings’ Category

Redtree Redux

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , on May 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Principle Gallery Show 2009This is a new piece that I recently completed.  It’s one of the  pieces that will be included in my upcoming show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA which opens June 12.  This will be my tenth show at the Principle and we are calling this show Redtree Redux: Ten Years Along, which echoes the title of my first show there in 2000, Redtree.          

This piece, still untitled, really strikes me at the moment.  It’s kind of where where I envisioned my work going when I was still working on that first show ten years back.  It has the quiet I want my work to have along with a dramatic contrast as seen in the sky.  There is a path that enters the picture plane and seems to end or disappear, enigmatically.  I find myself liking that little question that is raised by the path.

There’s also an austerity in the landscape that speaks to me and gives me that feeling of being awash in the air and light of a wide open space.  The absence of other trees or structures gives the central figure added prominence.  

I am still taking in this painting and still figuring out what I’m seeing in it beyond the immediate visceral impact.  It’s this reading-the-tea-leaves moment that I really enjoy most in the process.  When I’m starting a piece I’m not sure what’s going to emerge and as it proceeds there are still moments when the painting’s final appearance and feel  are still subject to decisions to come.  But when it has reached that feeling of completion, that point when I sense a certain rightness, it has left my hands or mind and takes on a new dimension of its own, having its own momentum and life.  It’s at this point that I get to look at it with different eyes and in that there is a certain fulfillment and satisfaction.  

So I’ll periodically look at this piece over the weeks ahead and continue to absorb it before it leaves my hands for what will probably be the final time in June.  And that’s okay because I will have received what I need from it in that time and it will better serve someone else in a new environment, hopefully giving them the same feelings that struck me.

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Snakes On a (Picture) Plane

Posted in Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , on May 2, 2009| 2 Comments »

dsc_0393-small-snakes1Saturday morning, the sun is shining and I find myself cautiously optimistic.  It makes me somewhat suspicious.  

So let me show a small piece that I recently finished, simply called Snakes for the time being.  It’s the type of piece I like to do periodically to more or less cleanse the palette, clear the head and try to reboot the brain.  Shake things up a bit.  I’ve done others like this, some with fish-like squiggles in a swirl, and find myself strangely drawn to them.

I like the abstract quality and and I like the process of painting them, weighing each new element as its added against the existing pieces of the picture.  Like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that changes with each piece that goes together.  

I guess I used snakes for this composition for their shapes and flexibility of form.  I have nothing against snakes but I’m not a big fan of handling them and when I run across them I give them their space.  This past year we stumbled across one basking in the sun behind my studio.  He was coiled in a pile like a short piece of thick black hose.  Must have been at least an inch thick with slightly blacker markings running up each side of his dark length, biggest snake I’ve seen around our place.  We gave him some room.  Later, after looking up what type he might have been we concluded he was some sort of rattler (we couldn’t see his tail’s end) or ratsnake.  Impressive.

How that brings us to this piece of music makes little sense.  This is a piece from Karl Jenkins, his version of Dies Irae, which translates as Day of Wrath, taken from the  Latin hymn of the 13th or 14th century.  I guess the suspicions of my early morning optimism have spawned a severe reaction in that I find myself playing a piece of music based on the biblical Day of Judgement .  Go figure.  Make of it what you will…

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Name This Painting!

Posted in Neat Stuff, Recent Paintings, tagged , on April 22, 2009| 20 Comments »

GC MyersI’m looking for a little help.

This is a small painting that I’ve completed for my upcoming June show,  at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria,VA.  It is my tenth solo show there and I wanted to do a few different things for this show.  This is one.

I’m looking for suggestions on names for this piece from anyone out there.  You can simply submit a title as a comment or if you’re a little shy about such things, e-mail it to info@gcmyers.com .

All submissions will be listed on the back of this piece so that all titles will, in a way, live on, so long as the painting exists.  I will select a title from those sent in to be the official title of this painting.  I will send the person who sends in the title I select a small gift.  I won’t disclose what that may or may not be .  Let me just say that it will be appropriate for the winning effort.

Let’s see, we’ll end this thing on April 30.

So, be creative and give it a shot.  At the very worst, your title will live on on the back of a piece of art.  Or maybe you’ll come away with a prize.  So, please send me a title or this will look pretty embarrassing.

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Looking at the World Twice

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on April 6, 2009| 1 Comment »

mann-lwt-cover-fin-jpegAbout a year ago I received an e-mail from Alicja Mann.  She is a writer with an interesting past, living now in Arizona who has a couple of my paintings.  She informed me that she was working on a new book of essays and poetry and wanted to use the image from one of the paintings of mine that she owned on the cover.  I was honored that she chose to use my work and gave my okay.

It had completely slipped my mind until this morning when I received another e-mail from Alicja with the announcement that her book was out.  She explained that she had encountered obstacles in the past year that had slowed her progress in completing her project but had overcome them and was pleased with the final product.  

According to the book’s website:  “The author writes from the perspective of “the other European” (from Eastern Europe) and “the other American” (an immigrant). She came to the States from Poland at a time when it was still dominated by Soviet-style Communism. In her new country she transformed herself from a scientist to a writer. These essays and poems take the reader on a journey through space and time addressing issues of identity, alienation, belonging, and responsibility. Sometimes funny, sometimes tearful, but always thoughtful, this book charms and provokes. It invites the reader to sit and reflect, as symbolized by the art on the cover.”

As you can see, she deals with many of the same issues as I do with my work.  I look forward to reading it soon and am sure it will inspire something new in my own work.  You can click on the book cover shown to go the book’s website.

st-vincent-springvitals_09In other publishing news, another painting of mine was used on the cover of Saint Vincent Vitals, the quarterly magazine of the western Pennsylvania based regional health care provider.  

Over the years, a number of people associated with Saint Vincent have acquired pieces of mine through the Kada Gallery in Erie.  I have met many of them at the gallery so was pleased when the magazine contacted me several months ago for permission to use my work on their cover.

Though I don’t actively seek this type of exposure for my work, it’s always interesting to see the work in a different context.  It allows me to see a bit how others view the work, to see what emotion it evokes in them.  In both of the cases shown, I think they both see it as I do.

And that is gratifying…

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Take Me Back to Tulsa

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on March 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

And All is RevealedThis week marks the beginning of my affiliation with Lovett’s Gallery in Tulsa, OK.

Lovett’s Gallery has been in business for over 30 years, a family-owned gallery serving Tulsa and the greater Midwest.  I have been very impressed in my dealings with Gallery Director Waylon Summers and owner Jack Summers and their operating philosophy. 

I look forward to a long partnership with their organization and I urge any of my readers, especially those in Oklahoma or the Midwest, to try to visit their gallery or website.Island of HopeCarried By a New Wind


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Endless Time

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on March 11, 2009| 1 Comment »

9908-302-endless-time-webI wanted to talk a little about the piece shown here, Endless Time, which is a 24″ X 30″ canvas.  This is what I consider a performance piece meaning that I have performed several paintings that have a similar palette and composition in different sizes.  

Each piece has its own character and feel, distinguished by differing color intensities and textures.  The colors of each are similar but have their own peculiar colors due to the factors that make my color palette differ from day to day.  Things like humidity and temperature, different gessoes that I use with differing absorption rates and my own lack of consistency in mixing color.

I call these performance pieces because I equate painting them to a musician performing their own composition.  The musician may often change bits of their own compositions, changing thing like tempo or intensity.  Changing the coloration of the notes and how they’re played.  The composition is intact and is identifiable but each individual performance has its own character, its own wealth.

You may notice something quite different in this piece as well.

No tree.  No red tree.  Nothing…

This is really a direct descendent from my earliest work that focused on open spaces and blocks of color, work that was meant to be spare and quiet.  The weight of the piece is carried by the abstract qualities of the landscape and the intensity of the colors.  

With this piece, I have chosen to forego the  kinship that the red tree often fosters with the viewer, acting as a greeter inviting them to enter and feel comfortable within the picture plane.   In Endless Time the viewer is left to their own devices when they enter the picture.  There is no place to hide, no cover.  They are exposed to the weight of the sky and the roll of the landscape.  They are alone with not a sound nor distraction.

It becomes, at this point, a meditation.  One is not merely looking at a landscape.  To go into this painting one must be willing to look inside themselves as well.  

And I think that is where the strength of this piece dwells.  I hope this is evident to some viewers and they feel welcome to enter this quiet space…

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Archaeology: Unburdened

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings on March 8, 2009| 2 Comments »

Archaeology: UnburdenedIt’s Sunday, the end of a long week with a lot of driving and certainly not enough painting to suit my needs, both professionally and personally.  

I’ve had a little time to mull over what I want to say with my work in the near future and am finally formulating concrete ideas that seem to be making sense.  It’s like stepping back and taking stock of yourself as a person, then determining what you are, in the present.  I want to go forward new and fresh, unfettered from the past.

It’s a hard thing to explain and even harder to do.  This painting, Archaeology: Unburdened, shows, in its own way, what I’m trying to say.  

We all emerge from the past but we must stand apart from that past, though our roots still run through it.  We must be adaptive to the present if we are to flourish.

I’m going to stop.  Too much rhetoric for a Sunday morning.  I actually just wanted to show this painting, one that I like a lot.

Have a good Sunday…

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As I Wander…

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on March 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »

As I Wander...This is a new painting, As I Wander…, which can now be seen at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

 

          Well, I made quick work of my road trip to deliver new work to galleries that represent my paintings in North Carolina and Virginia.  I decided not to dilly-dally and whipped off the 1500 miles in two days, returning home by 6 PM last night.  It was a pretty uneventful trip with fairly light traffic on the major routes.  You can tell the economy is down by the decrease in tractor-trailer traffic, particularly on Rte. 81 which is often packed during better economic times with FedEx trucks shuttling from Memphis towards the Northeast.  On this trip, the lanes were pretty clear so I was able to move unencumbered at a pretty good clip.

I spent a couple of hours at each gallery, discussing the coming year and telling them a little more about my new work, particularly the obsessionist work.  I use the pieces that were delivered as a gauge of how the viewing public will respond to this work, to get a sense of how well the work delivers an emotional impact.  It’s sometimes hard to get a feel for this particular aspect of a painting in the studio as I may see things in the work that trigger an emotional response in myself that are not so obvious to others.  I’m basically, at this point, trying to confirm that what I see in the work is translating well to the viewing public.  

But now I’m home and back into my routine, an environment that best suits the manner in which my mind functions.  If you’re in these areas, please stop in the Haen Galllery in Asheville or the Principle Gallery in Alexandria and take a look at the new.  I’ll be glad to hear your responses.

The Coming Light

 

 

     The Coming Light, shown here, is available now at the Haen Gallery in downtown Asheville.

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Road Ready

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , on March 2, 2009| 2 Comments »

In the Calming LightThis is a new painting, titled In the Calming Light.  It’s one of the new pieces that I’m preparing to take to one the galleries that represent me when I make a mini-sweep through Asheville and Alexandria in the next few days.

It’s always good to hit the road for a bit and see my friends at the galleries,  to catch up on what’s new at the galleries and give them a better idea of where I think my own work is going in the near future.  That being said, I’m not a great traveler.  From the moment I leave the end of my driveway I’m counting the minutes until I’m back in my comfortable cocoon.  It doesn’t have to be a long trip either.  It could be a run to the supermarket.  

After a  short time, I’m ready to be back home.

But today I prepare to be on the road tomorrow.  I’m packing paintings, doing paperwork and checking weather reports.  Early tomorrow I’ll be on the road, my traveling anxiety a constant companion.

And I’ll be counting the moments until I’m home…

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The New Phoenix

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , on February 22, 2009| 1 Comment »

dsc_0349-webI am calling this painting, for now at least, The New Phoenix.  It’s a new piece and is an extension of what I term my obsessionist work.  This is a 30″ X 40″ canvas and really seems to have a glowing vibration in the light.  

It also has the depth into the picture plane that I feel is the difference between effective and less effective paintings, particularly my own.  I’ve been looking at this piece for several days and feel that it’s a very strong example of one of my iconic images.  It has a bold look with great contrasts yet still has the calmness and quiet that I want in my work.  Strong yet thoughtful…

This piece has a certain degree of empathy that I find attractive.  I can’t quite describe what mean or how I see it- just a feeling I see in this painting.  Empathy is an important term for me, in my work and in many aspects of my life.  I want to write more about it at some point not because I want to bare some part of my self but because as a whole I think empathy is lacking in many of our lives.

But today I don’t want to go any deeper into that subject.  I just want to look at this painting a bit more before it goes out into the world alone…

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