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Archive for the ‘Technique/History’ Category

Presentation

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, Technique/History, tagged , , on July 7, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- With All Possibility smThis is a painting of mine from a number of  years back, a 16″ by 20″ canvas titled With All Possibility.  For the past several years it has hung in a back room of my studio but has remained a favorite of mine.  It’s part of a group of paintings of mine that is often referred to as the Dark Work which refers to the dark ground on which they’re painted and deep and dark  primary colors of the surface.  This work started in the months after 9/11 as we struggled as a nation to find footing.  This work was my emotional response at the time.  The work never gained the favor of my more typical work but I have always believed that it has something real in it, something that expresses a base emotion with genuine truth.

That’s why I probably give this work a go in the studio  every so often, painting new pieces to see if I still see something in this style.  This particular painting was part of  such a revisit back in 2007.  I thought at the time that this was a strong piece of work and, having had it around for a few years now, still believe so.  But it never raised any interest in its limited visits to a couple of galleries so I tried to figure out if  there was  fault in it.

Sometimes this is the case in some paintings, where I will have strong feelings over a piece that just doesn’t click with anyone.  I may be seeing something that is not visible in the surface of the work– an inspiration or even my own memory of the painting  process– which affects my judgement of the piece.  After some time, I will begin to see this and begin to see that my judgement of it was tainted, that I was not seeing the painting as it really was and, as a result, was missing real flaws in it.  Flaws that deprived it of the life that I thought I was seeing  when in fact I was only sensing my memory of the creation of it.  A big difference.

But looking at this piece, I still felt there was something real, something strong.  The forms, the colors, the textures– it all seemed to work in a rhythm of simple harmony with focus and depth.  Everything I look for in my work.  What was wrong?

It didn’t take long to figure it out.  It was my presentation of the work.  The frame.  At the time of this piece, I tried a very short-lived experiment with some gold-leafed frames, wide flat mouldings with a more classic  style.  I was trying to have the frame add weight to my work and it was a huge mistake.  It was not in any kind of sync with my work and it even went against my own personal rule which always has the edges of my work, on paper or on canvas, exposed.  I have only had a few pieces over the many years where the edges are covered and even those few still nag at me.

But here was this piece in this frame that would be more suitable for a more traditional pastoral scene in oil, its edges trapped under the gold-leafed rim.  It was all wrong.  How could I have not seen this long ago?

I unframed it and I immediately felt so much better, like a weight was lifted off my chest.  Liberated from the golden bindings of that frame, the painting seemed as strong and as vibrant as I had  thought .  I had been trying to present it as something that it was not and in the process had shaded its reality from the viewer.  It now sits without a frame and, if it ever leaves the studio, will have a proper presentation– edges exposed and ready to fly free.

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Signature

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Technique/History, tagged , , on June 21, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers Life Forms ca 2004I spent yesterday working on a piece that was based on the photo from yesterday’s blogpost, one from Paul Strand that featured tiny figures on a sidewalk in a park.  I had translated the composition immediately and could see what I wanted in my head but just could not get it to translate on paper.  It was frustrating and had me flummoxed for most of the afternoon.  I just could not get to the image in my mind, could not achieve the depth and feel that I was seeing.

I wanted to taste a hearty stew  but was only getting weak broth.

I think that it came down to the fact that I had not completely absorbed the composition, had not fully made the transition from the original inspiration to a point where it became my own.  Like learning a piece of music where you are trying to discover the flow and rhythm of it, trying to see the pattern laid down by the original composer before you impose your own interpretation on it.  Making their notes your notes.

This is normally not a a problem for me.  The way I paint allows immediate transition into my own hand normally.  But sometimes when I try to force my work into a pattern that is not mine and is not fully hashed out, the results are less than stellar.

 

The piece at the top is not an example of this.  Rather, this is a the opposite, even though it may not resemble my normal work.  From 8 or 9 years ago, this  started as an exercise where I was just getting back to colors that I strayed from had , each little sliver being combinations of color.  Slowly,  it evolved into this fish-like swirl.  I find myself drawn into the pattern and movement of this and it works for me because it feels pure, feels as though it is my own rhythm and flow even though it doesn’t resemble my typical work.

I don’t know how to put this coherently.  It just feels natural, like writing your own signature.  I’ve down a couple of these over the years and they are among my favorites, probably because of this.  When I compare the easiness and grace of this piece to yesterday’s effort, there is a world of difference.  In this piece I am signing my own name whereas yesterday I was trying to forge a signature.  But if I can ever get to that image in my mind that changes and my signature begins to appear.

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Samadhi

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , on June 4, 2013| 3 Comments »

9913-181 Samadhi smThis new painting, a thin slice at 4″ by 24″ on paper,  is called Samadhi and is part of my show, Observers, that opens Friday at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.  It was one of those pieces that I start then somehow lose its momentum during the process.  The first movements  come easily and a flow is developing and it seems as though it will soon reveal its true self.  Then suddenly it’s gone.  There is no obvious next move  and the surface gives me no hints, has no voice for the time being.   Even the marks that are made have lost all animation, seeming lifeless.  All I can do is put it aside with the hope that at some point it would call out and want to emerge fully realized.

And that is how this piece evolved.  It shined than dulled then suddenly became energized once more.  The end result seems effortless and graceful but coming to this end was a struggle to clear the mind so that it might come through.

I suppose that is where the title, Samadhi, comes in.  Samadhi is a Hindu/ Buddhist  term that represents a meditative one-mindedness, a connection with the ultimate reality of things.  A union with the divine.

Now, I am not a Buddhist or schooled in Eastern religion so I am not going into a long explanation here.  It’s a word that describes  a fragile, fleeting state of being, one that suddenly appears for those who have the ability to release the binders of self  and enter a meditative state where they are not in the moment but are the moment, bound with everything around them and beyond.

It seems so easy but  becomes impossible with too much effort, too much struggle.

And that is what I saw with this painting.  I struggled with it and it became more and more distant and alien.  But I set it aside and came back with a clear mind and no expectation.  It would be what it would be.  And what emerged reflected this attitude.

Calm.  Accepting. Ethereal and always in the present, the continuum of the past and the future connected in the moment.

Samadhi…

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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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Setting a Path/ Redux

Posted in Influences, Technique/History, tagged on April 13, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Old Studio 2007I came across this photo of the path leading up to my old studio that sits in the woods above our home.  It served me well for a decade but now sits idle, patiently waiting for Mother Nature to reclaim it as her own.  When I think of that space, I always think first of its coldness in the winter when the wood pellet stove would not quite keep it comfortably warm, my breath coming out in visible mists at times.  But I also also think of the walk from the studio to the house, how the path became ingrained, so much so that walking down the hill in the deepest darkness was no problem at all.  Each step, each footfall just fell into place.

It reminds me of an entry I made here about four years back that talked about this path, one called Setting a Path:

For ten years I walked up the road through the woods to my old studio.  It was a logging road from the two or so times the forest had been harvested over several decades and ran along a run-off creek that dries up most summers.  There were two visible tracks from the tires of vehicles that had climbed the gentle rise over the years and as the years passed, another track formed between them from my own footsteps.

This was the path I walked several times a day, up and down the hill.  At first I thought nothing of it.  It was simply a path.  But over the years I began to notice things about it. I could walk the path in the absolute black of night with no problem, each step falling in a natural way directly to this path.   If I tried to walk off the path it seemed unnatural and required a degree of attention to my stride so I wouldn’t stumble.

I came to realize that my trail was the path of least resistance.  It was the path that carried me with the least effort.  Each step fell naturally in place, accounting for the slightest change in the topography and had the same effect as water flowing down a creek.

I began to notice that the trails formed by deer and other animals were  the same.  When I followed them, they would move slightly in one direction or the other, just when your stride wanted to shift naturally and simply from gravity.  There was the same sense of rightness I talk about in my painting.  They never veer drastically, always in smooth, subtle curves.  They would always  run along the grade as though were the elevation lines on a topographical map.  Following them required little effort or thought.

Going off the path was a different matter.  It took thought, concentration and effort.  There were new obstacles to overcome.  Branches that crossed the path, blocking your view ahead and slapped the side of your head.  Downed trees that had to be climbed over.  Roots that rose through the dirt and tripped you.  It was real work.

I guess herein lies the point.  If I wanted to go where others had went before me, I could follow their trail. This would be the simple and logical way.  But if I wanted to go to a different place, one that was fresher and less visited, I might have to set my own path.  It wouldn’t be easy.  It would require more effort, more thought and the risk of not finding my way.  But if I forged ahead and found my way, there would be a new, hard won  discovery and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it.

I could blather on a little more but I think my little lesson learned from the land (nice alliteration, eh?) has come to an end.  We all choose our paths.  Some take the easier trail.  Some blaze new trails.  And some go into the woods and never come out…

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Click

Posted in Influences, Painting, Technique/History, tagged , , on March 23, 2013| 1 Comment »

GC Myers Studio 4 AMSometimes you can almost hear it click.

It happened this morning about 3 AM as I was laying in bed trying to convince myself that I really needed to get to sleep,  to try to grab some rest.  But my mind would have none of that.  It was spinning and snapping– things that had to be done,  ideas for upcoming shows, new compositions that I wanted to get down.  My head was racing and it felt like a big ball of anxiety was building inside of me.  In the past I might have written it off as such.

But for me it was a huge relief to have that knot in my stomach once again.  It was like the big click of a switch going off inside that was triggering some creative surge.  I had felt this before and had missing it as of late.  I know that it sounds funny to bemoan the fact that anxiety and fear have been absent in one’s mind.  But I knew from experience that this anxiety was something just trying to push itself out of me.  Something to which I had to respond, had to harness and use.  React to and express.

When I did the interview for the TV crew  last week, they asked what painting meant to me and I struggled in coming up with an answer.  I can’t remember exactly what I told them.  I guess the answer should have been that painting gave me a way to make this anxiety that has been my lifelong companion take a positive form.  I have learned to embrace it and when it comes around with that big click that is telling me there’s something on the way, I react.   So here I am at 4 AM, happily in the studio,   already having prepped new panels, jotted down the images that were dancing in my head and am getting ready to break out the paint.

Click.

 

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Redemption Bay

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on March 15, 2013| 6 Comments »

GC Myers 2013- Redemption BayEarly last week, I wrote about spending several hours working on a piece that seemed to go nowhere, had no rhythm or flow.  I was trying to force things that just weren’t there and the whole thing gave me an anxious feeling.   I  decided to count  it as a momentary setback and painted it over, erasing the failure and creating a clean slate on which to build something new .  I then went to work, trying to quiet my mind and letting the piece grow bit by bit.

This is what has emerged.

I am temporarily calling this painting, a 36″ by 36″ canvas, Redemption Bay.  It’s obviously named for the effort in reversing a failure but the name may fit in other ways, as well.  I’m still reading it and trying to decipher exactly what it says to me.  I can see many themes in it.  Cycle of life, external guidance and so on.

It has the flow and rhythm that was missing in the first attempt, elements meshing together to create a movement that takes the eye through and into the piece.  It’s exactly what I was trying to force in the failed attempt and came once I let the piece go on its own.   It’s been my experience that my best work comes when I trust   instincts over intellect.  I’m going to spend some time with this piece and see how it grows on me now.

So far, so good.

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Lessons Revealed…

Posted in Music, Painting, Technique/History, Video, tagged , , on March 3, 2013| 9 Comments »

gc-myers-studio-march-2011I’m sitting in my studio looking at an empty canvas.  It wasn’t empty not too long ago.  No, I spent the better part of the afternoon yesterday working on this canvas, a 36″ square that was prepped beforehand with gesso and a first layer of black paint.  Several hours spent and not a minute of it felt smooth or in rhythm.  The paint didn’t come off the brush in the way that I expected or desired.  The composition seemed to just go nowhere ,leaving bland and lifeless  bits of nothing littered all over the canvas.  I never felt a flow, that quality I have described before where one mark leads to the next as though you are reading the lines and strokes on the canvas like they were revelatory tea leaves.

No tea leaves here yesterday.  Everything led to nothing.   After a few hours, I was exasperated and I knew deep down inside  that I had betrayed my own words and had tried to force the work rather than let it flow out organically.  That was the lesson and I knew what had to be done.  I  laid the canvas flat on the floor and broke out the black paint, covering the offensive marks that had been there moments before.

It felt good, actually.

Time reveals many things and after tens of thousands of hours spent in the studio I have learned that  failure is no big deal.  It’s like the weather– temporary.  It comes and goes.  A failure like yesterday doesn’t make me happy but knowing that sometimes things just don’t work out makes me take such  a temporary failure  with a philosophical shrug.  And instead of struggling ahead with this horror show that was unfurling before me, trying to somehow cobble it back to life, my experience has taught me that it would be best to retreat and start anew.

Tabula rasa, so to speak.told

So here I sit this morning, a new day,  with a fresh canvas waiting for me and there is a new air of anticipation around it.  Yesterday is but a lesson and there’s no telling what the time spent today will reveal.  Can’t wait.

Here’s one of my all-time favorites which sort of ties in with today’s post.  It’s Time (The Revelator) from Gillian Welch.

 

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Willingly Off Balance

Posted in Painting, Quote, Technique/History, tagged , , on February 4, 2013| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers Feb 2013 W-I-PThis is a new piece that I started over the weekend.  It’s a fairly large canvas, 24″ by 48″,  gessoed and blackened before I began to lay out the composition in the red oxide that I favor for the underpainting.   I went into this painting  with only one idea, that it have a mass of houses on  a small hilltop.  That is where I began making marks, building a small group of blocky structures in a soft pyramid.   A little hilltop village.  From there, it went off on its own, moving down the hill until a river emerged from the black.   An hour or two later and the river is the end of a chain of lakes with a bridge crossing it.  We’ll see where and what it is when  it finally settles.

I like this part of the process, this laying out of the composition.  It’s all about potential and problem-solving, keeping everything, all the elements that are introduced, in rhythm and in balance.  One mark on the canvas changes the possibility for the next.  Sometimes that possibility is limited by that mark, that brush of paint.  There is only one thing that can be done next.  But sometimes it opens up windows of potential that seemed hidden before that brushstroke hit the surface.  It’s like that infinitesimal moment before the bat hits the pinata and all that is inside it is only potential.  That brushstroke is the bat sometimes and when it strikes the canvas, you never know what will burst from the rich interior of the pinata, which which is the surface of the canvas here.  You hope the treats fall your way.

One of the things I thought about as I painted was the idea of keeping everything in balance.  Balancing color and rhythm and compositional weight, among many other things, so that in the end something coherent and cohesive emerges.  It’s how I view the process of my painting.  Over the years,  keeping this balance becomes easier, like any action that is practiced with such great regularity.  So much so that we totally avoid problems and when we begin to encounter one, we always tend to go with the tried and true, those ways of doing things that are safest and most predictable in their results.

It’s actually a great and safe way to live.  But as a painter who came to it as a form of seeking,  it’s the beginning of the end.  And as I painted, I realized that many of my biggest jumps as an artist came because I had allowed myself at times to be knocked off balance.  It’s when you’re off balance that the creativity of your problem-solving skills are pushed and innovation occurs.

It brings to mind a quote from Helen Frankenthaler that I used in a blogpost  called Change and Breakthrough from a few years back:   “There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about. ”  

 You must be willing to go outside your comfort zone, be willing to crash and burn.   Without this willingness to fail, the work becomes stagnant and lifeless, all the excitement taken from the process.  And it’s that excitement  in the studio that I often speak of  that keeps me going, that keeps the work alive and vitalized.

It’s a simple thing but sometimes, after years of doing this, it slips your mind and the simple act of reminding yourself of the importance of willingly going off balance is all you need to rekindle the fire.

This is a lot to ponder at 5:30 in the morning.  We’ll see what this brings in the near future.  Stay tuned…

 

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A Quick Look Back at 2012

Posted in Biographical, Technique/History, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 2, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- The Internal Landscape 2012I’ve been hobbled a bit over the last couple of weeks by a pinched nerve in my neck that has made any work (or sleep) almost impossible to accomplish. Hopefully, it will soon fade and I will be working feverishly again.  But while it has kept me from work, it has not prevented me from thinking back on 2012 and what it meant for my work.  It was truly a great year for it, one that will be hard to replicate.

Four solo shows in galleries.

In June, there was A Place to Stand at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia.  It was my  thirteenth solo show at a gallery that has meant very much to my career.

July found my show, In Rhythm, opening at the West End Gallery in Corning, New York.   I started my career at the West End and this show, my eleventh there, may have been the best of the lot.

Inward Bound opened in October at the Kada Gallery in Erie Pennsylvania.  I have  been  showing with the Kada for what will be seventeen years  in early 2013 and had a show there every two years since 2004.  This was one of my favorites there or anywhere.  There was a wonderful review in the Erie paper that I featured here.

December found me on the west coast with an opening of my show, The Waking Moment, at the Just Looking Gallery in lovely San Luis Obispo.  It was my first show with this long established California gallery with whom I began a relationship earlier in the year.  They have done an absolutely terrific job in exposing my work to folks from LA to San Francisco.  It was a pleasure meeting the collectors and staff out there I look forward to a long term partnership with them.

Of course, the biggest event this year was my first ever museum exhibit, Internal Landscapes: The Paintings of GC Myers, at the prestigious Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. It opened in August and just closed this past Sunday,  A fitting end to a great year.  The show featured a group of my work from the past several years including the new The Internal Landscape , shown above, which is the largest piece I have painted and one that I featured on this blog early in the year as it was being completed.  The response exceeded my expectations in all regards and remains the high water mark  in my career to date.  It has given me a new perspective on what my work is and what it might be.  A great experience, all in all.

In between shows, there were gallery talks as well as my work being featured on the cover of a new CD, Lowe Country.  Plus, several of my paintings found their way to Uganda to hang in the US Embassy there, accompanying the new ambassador.

Along the way, I met scores of great folks who shared their stories with me.  Many thanks to everyone I encountered as well as more thanks than I can ever fully express to all of the  staff at the galleries and at the Fenimore who gave me the gift of this year.

As I said, it was year that will be hard to match.  But as soon as I am able, I will be trying to do just that. Or more.

 

 

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