Hogback Heaven, 1994

If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you’d find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies.

–Dave Barry, Turning 40

Things to do this morning but thought I’d replay an old post that first ran back in 2011. One note: The Hogback in the title refers to a road that usually runs along the ridge of a hill or mountain. We have one locally and I have found that it is one of those road names that appear all over. Well, al least, where there are hills.   And yes, I have known all the words to the Beverly Hillbillies’ theme song nearly all my life. It’s one of those things that crowds out the much more useful info that should occupy my brain.

Looking through some old work, most of which was done early on while I was still forming my technique and style and before I showed my work publicly, I came across this oddity that I noted as Hogback Heaven. It’s a goofy little scene of a roughhewn home and hardscrabble yard somewhere out on a dirt road in the country, the kind of place that I often passed years ago in my treks on the backroads around my home area. All that is missing here from my memories of those places are a couple of barking hounds and a toddler in a sagging diaper playing in the gravel of the driveway. Maybe a goat, as well.

Whenever I come across this piece, I have to smile. I don’t know if it’s the subject or the crazy electric feel of the cobalt blue sky and hills and the red neon outlines of the house and ground. I’m still trying to figure out where that color came from. Maybe it’s a smile of embarrassment that this little painting is hovering in my past. But there’s something in it that makes me want to keep it around.

I wanted to set this post to some fitting music and in my search came across this other sort of oddity. Called Yiddish Hillbillies, it’s a vintage 40’s era cartoon that has had the soundtrack replaced ( in a very clever and coordinated way) with a song from Mickey Katz.  Katz was a comedian who specialized in Jewish humor, with Yiddish-tinged song parodies of contemporary songs of the time being his specialty. Think Borscht Riders in the Sky or Sixteen Tons (of Latkes). While much of the Yiddish-tinged wording goes over my head I do enjoy the klezmer feel here. A note on Mickey Katz: His son is actor Joel Grey which makes him the grandfather of actress Jennifer Grey.

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Work-In-Progress, GC Myers 2017-2018

Sometimes, stepping away and letting a piece rest allows for music to evolve. When returning, one must not only adapt to the music’s maturity but also one’s own…

–Hélène Grimaud

I came across the tweet below from classical pianist Hélène Grimaud that contains the quote above but a short video in which she speaks about taking on a new piece of music and how sometimes stepping away from it for a while allows for its growth within the artist. Very interesting.

Though we work in different mediums, her words really struck close to home for me. I have found that sometimes a new painting will reach a point, far from its completion, where it takes on an air of inevitability, where its destination feels set in my mind. All the choices feel as though they have been made and all that remains is just putting these decisions down on the surface. Completing these pieces is not as satisfying as the excitement portion of the process which is so vital to me takes place early on in these paintings.

It’s like reading a book to the end when you know exactly what will take place on every page.

It doesn’t happen all the time. Most pieces offer challenges and excitement to the very moment they take on a life of their own. But it is not an unusual occurrence.

But sometimes a piece like that will strike me in a certain way that has me questioning that preordained feeling. There is something in it that is begging for more from me. I don’t know exactly what it might be at that moment but it feels wrong to push through to completion then. Maybe I have been too rigid in what I was seeing for this particular piece and it wants to be something other than that. Maybe I need to grow more myself before moving on with it.

In these cases, these pieces are set aside and I then return to them periodically, to study them for a few minutes to see if there is any movement in my thought process for them. Sometimes it takes only a few days or weeks, sometimes months or years.

I tell a story about a canvas whose semi-sculptural gessoed surface felt so perfect and visually exciting to me that I set it aside in the studio for 6 or 7 months. I knew that I had to grow into it, to have an evolved perception of it, before taking it on.

Another example is the piece at the top of this page. It has been in the studio for 5 or 6 years in the state in which it is shown. I liked it very much at the top it was done but it felt like it needed more time, that to just forge ahead with the inevitability that I saw in it then would create a lesser version of what it could ultimately be. I just didn’t feel that I was ready to finish yet.

Once again, I needed to grow into it.

There are a number of such set-aside pieces in the studio like this. Some will reach their potential. Some will not. This piece has been gnawing at me in recent weeks to be finished, that I am finally ready for it. We shall see where it goes from here.

There are also some pieces that are set aside because they didn’t feel as though they were worthy or strong enough, that they had something missing in the way they were progressing. Quite often, time shows me that I was just not seeing them in the proper way. My perception of them evolves and they become something quite different than I had saw at first. That is very satisfying to see the apparent growth in these pieces as well as in myself.

You can click on the arrow below to watch the film clip of Hélène Grimaud without going to Twitter or X or whatever the hell they call it now.

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Student and Master— At West End Gallery

One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don’t leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.

― Osho, Indian Mystic (1931-1990)

I’ve always said that one of the hardest things about pursuing a career in art is that there is no professional path or training that guarantees the artist that their work will find an audience.

You can try to travel the career path of other artists that came before you but it will inevitably end in disappointment. Every artist’s path is very different, with completely different influences, tastes, people, places, and circumstances.

Every artist walks their own path, much as Osho points out above in reference to those who seek enlightenment. And maybe the artist’s path is just that– a path to enlightenment.

I think the painting shown here, Student and Master, represents this idea well. You may begin by following a well-trod path but sooner or later, if you desire to be more than a traveler on someone else’s path, you have to go off that path and make one that is your own.

One that goes where no other have gone.

One that others may someday try to follow only to realize that the footprints on this path will soon fade.

This lack of a path to follow creates an uncertainty that can be daunting at first. There is no roadmap and few rules to follow. And there are even fewer markers along the way to tell you if you have went the right or wrong way on your path.

But though these things might seem like negatives, they are also the strength of choosing to go your own way. You are free to move in any direction in any way you wish. You don’t have to follow any rules but those that you make for yourself. Perhaps no rules at all. You can push yourself as far as you wish on your path. Nobody can tell you when your journey is over.

Realize however that this may not guarantee one success in the traditional sense. People may not necessarily love, understand, or accept what you do. Your path might well be lonely and filled with hardship at times.

That is a small price to pay to travel the path to authenticity. That is what is at the end of the path of one’s own making. Ultimately, that is the destination every artist seeks.

And you can’t find that on someone else’s path.

Here’s a song in the same vein, sort of. It’s a version of the great Mamas and the Papas hit, Go Where You Want To Go. It’s a performance from a few years back from Jakob Dylan and Jade for a tribute album, Echo in the Canyon, celebrating the music of L.A.’s Laurel Canyon in the 1960’s which consisted of artists like Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds.

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Before…— Painted September 10, 2001

Today is the 22nd year since the 9/11 Attacks. I wasn’t in NYC that day and had no friends or family at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon so I can’t write on the experience or emotions of those who were there or those who lost family and friends that day. Those folks whose lives were forever altered.

However, the many millions of us who witnessed the tragedy of that day from afar on our television screens had our lives changed as well. The world shifted a bit that day for everyone. We all saw our lives move on a slightly different path than the one we had been following before that day.

On September 11, 2011, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I wrote about how it had changed my life at the time. I had given my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery the day before and the subject of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 somehow was raised. Someone asked if that day had changed things for me, if it had altered my work in any way.

The Post below somewhat sums up my answer that day. It tells about my feeling on the day before 9/11, on September 10, 2001.

From September 11, 2011:

I could talk much more about yesterday’s talk and how much I appreciate those who attended but I guess I should at least weigh in on the obvious part of this date. It is, of course, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I’m sure there’s not a soul out there who hasn’t been made to remember this fact by the almost constant coverage by the media over the last several days.

In yesterday’s talk, I tried to avoid mentioning this, wanting to provide some sort of diversion, but somehow ended up talking about it anyway. I think it came about when I was trying to explain how much the support and energy that I received from these folks over the years had transformed my life. It reminded me very much of a feeling I felt on September 10th in 2001, the day before the attack.

September 10 that year was a spectacular late summer day with hints of autumn in the air, a pure blue sky and a sun that was softly warm but not harsh. Idyllically quiet and purely pleasant. I remember walking around my pond that day under that sky.  I was at the point in my year when I was done with shows that I was going to do for the year. My solo shows from both 2000 and 2001 had been wildly successful, far beyond what I ever imagined, let alone expected. On that day, that September 10th, I finally had a bit of time to relax and really think about this as I strolled around the pond.

I thought about how different my life was then, in 2001, than it had been ten years before. In 1991 I was a lost and miserable soul, living a purposeless life with little prospect of doing much with it. I was supremely unhappy and saw myself only as a failure.

But circumstances changed in the next few years. After a breakdown, a rebirth, and a serious accident, art unexpectedly entered my life. And with it, everything was suddenly and dramatically different. In painting, I found a form of expression that meshed with my thinking and emotions, giving them a sense of purpose. I began to clearly see those things that were there in my life that had always been there and were core to my existence but had somehow overlooked as I stumbled around blindly in prior years.

I had found myself as well as a reason for living. As I stopped by the pond with that clear sky above, all of this struck me on that day, that September 10th. I felt myself the most fortunate man in the universe that day. My life felt as complete and satisfying as I could imagine and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of appreciation for my good fortune.

I had trouble believing it was my life I was indeed living.

Of course, within 24 hours that feeling disappeared in the smoke and devastation of the events of that day. It’s taken ten sometimes awful years to somewhat approach that feeling again and yesterday, as I felt the warmth of that group, I talked about this feeling and my appreciation for them for allowing me to somewhat regain that feeling.

I don’t know that I made it totally clear. One doesn’t always speak easily about matters of grace.

The painting at the top was painted on that September 10th of 2001. It very much reflects the fullness and contentment I felt for my life on that day, at that specific point in my life. It is filled with that sense of peace and grace I hinted at above. It came to be titled Before…  

There was a strange twist to this painting. I always number my paintings so that I can more easily record and track them over time. The serial number for that painting was 99-911. I did nothing to make it fit this way, and in fact didn’t even recognize this number’s relationship to the date until sometime later. Just an eerie coincidence.

It is a painting that I deeply regret ever letting go as it marks such a distinct turning point in my life. And though I know for a fact that the folks who now possess it have their own deep feelings for this piece, they will never know how much it still lives with me, how much it reminds me that day, that September 10th when life seemed as good it could be and how rare and fleeting that moment can be.

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Ring of Fire #1– At West End Gallery

No one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won. The dust which had contaminated most of the planet’s surface had originated in no country, and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned on it.

–Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

There’s no real reason for today’s theme which I guess seems pretty dystopian. Part of it came from looking at some of the work from the Ring of Fire series from early this year such as the piece shown here.

This series came about as both an exercise and a way to use up a huge pile of photo paper that had accumulated over the years. It felt much too wasteful to just chuck it out. As a result, I began doing these quickly done faces.

This was the first of the series. It was painted quickly with an economy of strokes. That was part of the exercise, to use just a few expressive strokes to create a recognizable reality. If you were to zoom in on this piece, you might be surprised at how few and simple the brush slashes are.

It was the speed and the unconsidered manner of these pieces that attracted me. There was little time taken to prettify them and it gave them an immediacy and rawness that fits the emotional content of these people in obvious crisis.

Maybe it’s war or a natural disaster. Or maybe it’s just their own inner world being set on fire. It depends on what perspective from which one looks.

For today, I am seeing as being in wartime. That allows me to set up today’s Sunday Morning Music which is David Byrne and the Talking Heads with their 1979 classic Life During Wartime. This performance is from their 1984 film Stop Making Sense. As with most David Byrne/Talking Heads songs, it is enjoyable in all aspects and has aged well.

Hopefully, the same can be said for most of us…

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MARK YOUR CALENDAR!

GALLERY TALK

With

G C  M Y E R S

Returns to 

P R I N C I P L E  G A L L E R Y

Alexandria, VA

Three weeks from today

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Stay tuned for further details!

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Soloist– At Principle Gallery, Alexandria,VA

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.

–Norman Cousins

I wanted to play the song below today coupled with the painting above, Soloist, and wanted to add a short quote or passage to complete the triad. I wasn’t sure what the theme of this quote should be.

The song, She Slips Away, from one of my longtime favorites, guitarist Martin Simpson, was written about the death of his mother. I felt that there was an elegiac quality to the painting, that it was concerned with loss of some sort. But it didn’t feel like it had to be death that was being grieved.

Maybe lost love? Perhaps the landscape indicates the loss of our connection to the natural world? Or maybe it is something else– the loss of innocence or hope? Or maybe it is the grief that comes with losing one’s memories or losing a loved one to Alzheimers?

The song title She Slips Away always reminds me of the 2006 film Away From Her, which starred Julie Christie. It was about an older couple dealing with the wife’s Alzheimer’s. She is placed in a nursing facility where she loses all memory of her husband and develops a close relationship with another resident of the facility. That loss feels somehow greater than death itself.

I don’t know if that was what meant by the quote above from the late journalist/peace activist Norman Cousins. It is one of those quotes that is widely distributed whose original source is not easily found. I searched through all sorts of Cousins’ writings on the Internet Archive this morning and could not find a source. As a result, context is lacking.

So, I am taking it for what it is this morning, that there are losses greater than death.

Loss of identity. Loss of self-respect. Loss of confidence. Loss of friendships. Loss of trust. We continue to live despite these losses and so many others, often struggling to get beyond the often-overwhelming grief that comes with it.

I can see that in the painting and can hear it in Simpson’s song now. It all fits together.

Well, for me, at least…

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Island Getaway— Now at the West End Gallery

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.

—Paul Cezanne

Here’s a post from several years back:

I spend a lot of time alone in the isolation of my studio. Fortunately for me, it is the place in the world where I am most comfortable and feel completely myself.

It is the place where I can feel unrestrained to free the mind and go wherever it takes me. The place where I can shed the uncertainty I find in the outer world and feel free to daydream. The place where I can summon up landscapes that exist only inside myself. A place to study. To listen. To see.

It is my university, my library, my theater, my monastery and my place of refuge.

My haven.

When I am out of the studio, I am all the while trying to get back to it.

When others come into my studio, the dynamic of that place changes and I feel myself suddenly self-conscious and a bit uncomfortable, like I am standing in someone else’s home.

The visitors’ eyes become my eyes and I notice things I never see on a day-to-day basis. The cat hair on the floor that needs to be swept up. The paint splatters on the wall or a fingerprint in paint on the wall switchplate. The windows that need cleaning. The piles of papers that I have been meaning to go through for too many months. The paintbrushes soaking in murky water scattered throughout the place or the start of a not-too-good painting that will most likely never see the outer world.

In that moment, my perfect castle of isolation becomes a hovel of uncertainty.

But the castle remarkably reappears once I am alone again. The uncertainty recedes and I begin to feel myself once more.

My isolation is my default state of being.

I understand exactly what Cezanne is saying at the top. I have been more comfortable alone than in the company of others since I was a child. I don’t know if that is a strength or just a neurotic peccadillo. But I know that if I ever find uncertainty in my isolation, I will have lost my footing in this world.

But thankfully, that hasn’t happened yet…

The post above is from several years ago. I noticed this morning that it had received quite a few views here in the past days so I thought I would read it again for myself. Sometimes I go back to read something that has slipped from memory and it seems new to me. I recognized this one, most likely since it ran again here three years back. Plus, it was centered around a theme of isolation as a desired state of being, something I have wrote about a number of times before.

I’ve been experiencing periods of uncertainty in recent times so it seemed pertinent to me. In these down times, the inviting warmth and light I normally find in the isolation of my studio departs. The space feels as though it has been replaced by a cool and empty darkness as I struggle to find that creative spark that will once again provide the missing warmth and light.

As I have noted many times before, I know this feeling well. I have gone through it too many times before. Having done so, I know that it is a temporary thing so long as I persevere and keep lighting matches against the darkness.

Inevitably, one of those matches will eventually turns to a roaring flame and my splendid isolation will once again be as I desire it– invitingly warm and filled with light.

That is my certainty.

Speaking of Splendid Isolation, here is a favorite Warren Zevon song with that title which has been played here before. He mentions Georgia O’Keeffe who knew a bit about isolation.

Now, get out of here, you’re blocking my light…

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Passages: Beyond the Trees– At Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

–Mary Oliver

It’s been my privilege and good fortune to spend much of my life among the trees. I have climbed and played on them as a child and there are many memories of specific trees from my childhood. I have planted multitudes of trees and nurtured them. I have lived under their watchful cover and have built a studio among them where I worked for many years. In fact, much of my livelihood has been derived from a certain Red Tree.

Throughout it all, there has been a sense of them as beings, unlike us humans but living beings nonetheless. I think that sometimes that we are the aliens living among their native race here on earth. I also like to think that I have a neighborly friendship of sorts with the trees around me. An understanding it might be called.

I try to not harm them and try my best to protect them, that it is becoming harder as invasive species become more and more prevalent. The ash trees in our area are on their last legs, for instance, from the emerald ash borer beetle. It is tragic to see them begin to fail from the onslaught of the beetles. But they maintain their stoic dignity until the bitter end, as they slowly dissemble with their upper limbs falling first. Eventually, all that remains is a tall sheared off trunk standing as a memorial to the life that once stood proudly in that space.

I do mourn for the trees. There is a white pine that stands by our drive. It is probably 20-25 years old and watching its growth over the years has been a delight as it grew large and full in that time. But this year, this goddamn 2020, its needles suddenly went brown. It died quickly and completely. Each time, we pass it as we go down our drive, I feel a great sense of loss, a deep bite of anguish over the fact that it died on my watch.

It feels like it was our responsibility. We are the caretakers for our trees. Or rather, we serve the trees so that they can complete their destiny on their land.

That being said, the poem at the top from Mary Oliver certainly rings true for me as it recognizes the profound gift that trees often offer to those of us lucky enough to spend time and share space with them.

Here’s lovely reading of the poem from Amanda Palmer.

I have things to do this morning, so I am rerunning this post from a few years back. Reading it this morning reminded me of walking through the woods this spring with a logger who was hoping to purchase some of our trees. While I was okay with him taking the ash trees that were already in their death throes from the borers, his choice of some large oaks and beech trees made my heart sink. One was a sort of anchor tree that stood by our runoff creek, a tree I walked by and admired every day when my old studio was in use. The idea that it would be forever gone for a few fleeting dollars was not something I could tolerate. It was this tree that made us decide that we would turn down the logger’s offer. It was a decision that felt right as the caretaker– or servant– of the trees in my little world.

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Muse, 2009

There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, which enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric… But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art – he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.

–Plato, Phaedrus

The painting above is from 2009, painted on the insert panel of an old upright piano. The whole thing is about 18″ high by 60″ wide. Outside of a stint at the Fenimore Museum for my 2012 show there, it has never been out of my sight, hanging as it does on the wall of the studio’s main painting space. I can glimpse now and take it in. It’s one of those pieces that I don’t believe I could part with.

I call it Muse mainly for the Red Tree in the painting that has served as the muse and avatar for my time as a painter. It also refers to the piano aspects of the piece which represents for me the inspiration provided by music and other arts. Muse is, after all, right there in music.

As far as the passage above from Plato, he may have been right. There is at least a bit of madness–and maybe much more– that comes with the Muse’s inspiration. There are plenty of days when I consider the irrationality of what I do. It doesn’t make much sense on those days when the Muse seems to have turned her back on me.

But in short time, I let go of the stasis of rationality and there it is again. Like the panel on the wall, I am back in that landscape– in the temple of my Muse.

Where I am home and recognized. Where I belong…

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