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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Until the Sea Shall Free Them

Posted in Music, Painting, Quote, Video, tagged , , , , , on November 30, 2015| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Until the Sea Shall Free Them

All the Men will be sailors then, until the sea shall free them…

—Leonard Cohen, Suzanne

I call this new painting, a 7″ by 5″ piece on paper, Until the Sea Shall Free Them, which is taken from the lines of the Leonard Cohen song Suzanne.  The song’s sound, pace and feeling really jibe well with what I see in this piece so I felt taking the title from one of its lines was very fitting.

This is one of those pieces that has a composition that I connect with on an emotional level before it actually says anything to me on an conscious or intellectual level.  In other words, I like it before I can figure out why.  And there is something very satisfying in that.

And mystifying.  I generally want to know the why behind something.  But sometimes it is just better to enjoy the now and forget the why.  And that is what I am doing with this painting.

Here’s Suzanne from Cohen.

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Flamenco

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Video, tagged , , , , , , on November 29, 2015| 1 Comment »

John Singer Sargent El JaleoSunday morning and I am in need of a little kick.  Maybe a little flamenco music?  There something in the energy and precision of the music and the dance that makes it invigorating while still feeling calm.  And that seems right this morning. Just want I want and need.

Sargent_John_Singer_Spanish_Dancer Study for El JaleoFlamenco always reminds me of El Jaleo, the huge  ( it’s about 8′ by 11′ in size) masterpiece shown above  from John Singer Sargent. that hangs in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.  The very large painting at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum in Washington, shown here on the right, is actually a study for the dancer in El Jaleo although I think most people who see it think it works very well as its own painting.

If we’re going to have some flamenco this morning I think we should hear from the late great Paco de Lucia, king of flamenco guitar and one of the great guitarists of all time.  Here he is a year or two before his death in 2012 with his Buleria por Solea, the buleria referring  to the 12 beat rhythm of flamenco.  Enjoy and have a great Sunday as your Thanksgiving holiday winds down.

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Be Thankful

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Quote, Video, tagged , , , , , , on November 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Thornton Wilder Gratitude QuoteAnother Thanksgiving and  it might seem that it would be hard to find much to be thankful for in this turbulent world with its endless cornucopia of anger, hatred, intolerance, injustice and inequality set out for our consumption each day.  With a diet of so many negatives it would be easy to forget that one simple thing that truly feeds and sustains us– gratitude.

Recognizing and acknowledging those things that make us happy is such a simple thing yet we somehow lose sight of it.  I know my life feels so much more complete when I see how I am made happy by the light that the full moon casts on our evening walk.  Or in the way my studio cat, Hobie, runs to me with an audible purr when I enter in the morning. Or in watching the deer play and stroll through the studio’s yard, one or two sometimes stopping to stare in at me through the window.  Or in the songs of the birds in the woods.

Or in something so simple as a stranger returning a smile and a hello as they pass by.

Just little things that we sometimes overlook in the crush of the world.  But things that are important in our real connection to the world.  So today set aside your fears and anger and whatever else eats at you on a regular basis and try to think of those people who make you happy, those moments that might bring a smile or a tear and anything that gives your life fullness.  It’s not always easy but life ain’t too bad.

Here’s one of my favorite songs.  I know it makes me happy even when I am strolling along and can’t get its chorus out of my head.  It’s Be Thankful for What You Got from William DeVaughn from back in 1974.  Have a great Thanksgiving.

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Animated Rousseau

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged , , on November 12, 2015| 1 Comment »

Henri RousseauI just love the paintings of Henri Rousseau. It’s not something that I can quantify in any way. It’s not just the harmony of color and form or the subject matter or even the way it is painted. There’s just such a great sense of rightness in the work, a great sense that this is the artists’s reality.  It just reaches out and allows you to step easily into it while still maintaining a feeling of depth and emotion, a quality that many artists seek but few find.

I was surprised when I came across a video that animated some of Rousseau’s better known pieces.  Actually I was a little skeptical of the the whole thing.  But I watched it and found it very captivating in the way it is put together.  Soothing, actually, is a better word for it.

I don’t know if Rousseau would approve but it seems to be done with a great deal of affection for the work and maintains that sense of naivete, mystery and whimsy that runs through so much of Rousseau’s work.  Take a look for yourself.

 

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A Little Ray Bradbury

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , , , on November 11, 2015| 2 Comments »

Ray BradburyYou can’t think a story — you can’t think, “I shall do a story to improve mankind.” It’s nonsense! All the great stories, all the really worthwhile plays, are emotional experiences. If you have to ask yourself whether you love a girl, or whether you love a boy, forget it — you don’t! A story is the same way — you either feel a story and need to write it, or you’d better not write it.

— Ray Bradbury

************

I grew up reading Ray Bradbury stories–The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine and so on.  They were categorized as science fiction but they were really just stories of great humanity in different settings and times.  Every time I read a quote from Ray Bradbury  or read an interview, I like him more and more, if only for that same humanity that runs through his books.

A case in point is found in a short bit of an interview that he gave in 1972 during a drive with two students, Lisa Potts and Chad Coates, who had picked him up at his home in LA and were taking him to deliver a lecture at their college in Orange County.  This part of the interview is animated by Blank on Blank, which produces great animations of  rare found interviews from notable people.  Check out their site.

The quote at the top is from this interview and I think pretty much applies to the emotional experiencing of any creative work.  I have heard people say after looking at a piece of art that they don’t know anything about art, which to me implies that they don’t like it but don’t know whether they should say so because they might somehow be wrong in doing so.  But you often know instantly whether something hits or misses your emotional buttons, whether or not you say it aloud.  You have to learn to trust your own reaction.

But enough said, take a gander at the short film with Ray Bradbury.

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Starry Night

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , on October 18, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_over_the_RhoneThe first heavy frost of the season lays on the ground this morning and the remaining  orange and golden leaves on the trees cling tenuously.  The air is sharply clean and there’s beautiful light outside the studio .  I would like to sit and simply absorb it for a long time but there are things to do.

But I will take some time to listen to this week’s Sunday morning music and watch the images in the accompanying video.  The song was stuck in my head this morning as I walked through the woods to the studio.  It’s one that I haven’t heard in some time and when it emerged it just  demanded a listen.  It’s Vincent from Don MacLean from back in the 70’s.  It is, of course, about the life and paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.  It’s a lovely song plus the video has a nice group of Van Gogh images– not a bad way to ease into a cool Sunday morning.

Enjoy and have  a great day.

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Crazy Quilts

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , , on October 15, 2015| 3 Comments »

Fraser Smith -The Lake

Fraser Smith -The Lake

These quilts will keep you warm on a cold night– if you burn them in your fireplace.

You see, they are elaborate trompe l’oeil  ( it means fool the eye) sculptures from artist Fraser Smith.  Starting with large glued slabs of basswood, Smith carves quilts, coats, shirts, robes and other textile items, finishing them off with paints that add a layer of reality that completes the transition from a block of wood to something that convinces your mind that it is soft and cuddly.

I am amazed at the detail work and can only conclude that Smith has an amazing obsession for this.  Check out the examples below as well the short film that shows how the piece at the top metamorphosizes.  Interesting stuff.   Also check out his website by clicking here.

Fraser Smith Improv 7 2009 Carved Wood and Silk Dyes Fraser Smith Finding Beauty in Bad Things 2013 Carved Wood and Silk Dyes Fraser Smith American Jacket 2010 Carved Wood and Silk Dyes

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It Is What It Is

Posted in Video, tagged , , , , , , on October 10, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers Dominion smI have been away for a few days, taking in a couple of plays at the Shaw Festival in Canada.  I will write more about that later.  For this morning, I wanted to rerun a post that I first ran back in 2009 and again 2012.  It’s a post that always helps me find personal clarity.

Sometimes, usually at certain points of my year, there are times when I begin to question what I do and who I am as an artist.  It’s a time when my normal self-confidence falls aside and I fret about the future of my work.  It’s an internal struggle that usually resolves itself in the paint itself.  I paint and the doubts fade away, replaced by new revelations found in the spaces of my work.  Here’s what I wrote a few years back: 

There was an episode of Mystery! on PBS starring Kenneth Branagh as Swedish detective Wallander.  It was okay, a nice production but certainly nothing remarkable in the story.  But there was a part at the end that struck home with me and related very much to my life as a painter.  Wallander’s father, played by the great character actor David Warner, was, like me, a landscape painter.  Now aged and in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, his son comes to him and intimates that he can’t go on as a detective, that he can’t take the stress.  The painter then recalls how  when Wallander  was a boy he would ask his father about his painting, asking, “Why are they always the same, Dad?  Why don’t you do something different”

He said he could never explain.  Each morning when he began to paint, he would tell himself that maybe today he would do a seascape or a still life or maybe an abstract, just splash on the paint and see where it takes him.  But then he would start and each day he would paint the same thing- a landscape.  Whatever he did,  that was what came out.  He then said to his son, ” What you have is your painting- I may not like it, you may not like it but it’s yours.”

That may not translate as well on paper without the atmospheric camera shots and the underscored music but for me  it said a lot in how I think about my body of work.  Like the father, I used to worry that I would have to do other things- still lifes, portraits, etc.- to prove my worth as a painter but at the end of each day I found myself  looking at a landscape, most often with a red tree.  As time has passed, I have shed away those worries.  I don’t paint portraits.  Don’t paint still life.  I paint what comes out and most often it is the landscape.  And that red tree that I once damned when I first realized it had became a part of who I am.

I realized you have to stop damning who you are…

Here is that clip:

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Hogback Heaven/ Redux

Posted in Early Paintings, Music, Video, tagged , , , , on October 5, 2015| 1 Comment »

I am a little busy this Monday morning but I wanted to run something to replace yesterday’s post at the top of this blog.  Something a little lighter in feel  I came across this entry from back in 2011 and it made me stop.  It’s about an old experiment from my formative years along with a great little piece pf music.  Enjoy!

GC Myers- Hogback Heaven 1994Looking 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 rough hewn home and yard somewhere out on a back country road, 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 barking hound and a toddler in a sagging diaper playing in the gravel of the driveway.

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 embarassment that this little painting is hovering in my past. But there’s something in it that makes me not want to destroy it.

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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Stan Herd’s Van Gogh

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , , , , , , on October 2, 2015| 2 Comments »

Stan Herd's Take on Van Gogh

Stan Herd’s Take on Van Gogh

Stan Herd is an an American artist who uses the land as his canvas, creating large earthworks that reveal themselves from great heights.  He has been at this for over 40 years, beginning in 1981 after a short and less than satisfying career as an abstract expressionist painter.  Working in the tradition of other great earth artists such as Robert Smithson and Christo, Herd has traveled around the globe for his art and has been tabbed as the  “Father of Crop Art.”  He has even been the subject of an acclaimed movie, Earthwork, that tells the story of a 1990’s project where he creates an environmental artwork on a NYC property owned by Donald Trump— yeah, that guy.

His most recent is a project from this year that he took on in conjunction with the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) that had him replicating Van Gogh‘s famed painting, Olive Trees, in plantings.  It was situated so that fliers arriving at the Minneapolis airport would be able to see it as they were landing.  There’s a great short film below that shows a little of the process and gives you a better idea of the artist.

Take a look at Stan Herd’s website by clicking here.  Great stuff…

Stan Herd NYC- CountrysideStan-Herd-art2-Stan Herd Land Crop Art

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