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Shadowland

February 1, 2017 by redtreetimes

GC Myers- Shadowland 2003This painting, a 24″ by 20″ canvas is titled Shadowland. It’s from back in 2003 and has been living with me for almost all of the time since, floating from wall to wall in the studio. It’s been with me for so long that it sometimes go unnoticed and unappreciated for long periods of time.  But sometimes I find myself stopping as I am passing it with some other thought in mind.

There are times when I’ll look at it and think, almost dismissively,”It’s just too simple.”

But there are moments like this morning when I find myself completely swallowed by the scene, as though the simplicity of the composition were drawing me close so that it could envelope me in its warm tones.

In those moments, I am entranced, embraced in a colorful atmosphere that surrounds me like a blanket. I am safe. The anger, the anxieties and the cares of the physical world are kept at bay for a moment.

A brief but glorious moment.

And those few seconds give me hope and fill me with energy.

And I find myself wondering how that emotion, that feeling, was hidden in such a simple thing.  And I am gladdened that there is that mystery, that it is so far beyond me.  I need that mystery, that wonder.

It means that my work is still ahead of me.  My task.

And I say, “It’s just too simple.”

But I am not being dismissive this time.

 

Posted in Painting, Personal Mythology | Leave a Comment »

Schedule (So Far)

January 31, 2017 by redtreetimes

9917104-blue-etude-smThis is a new painting, a 4″ by 4″ piece on paper, called Blue Etude.  It’s part of a small group of new work that is included in the Little Gems show that opens this Friday at the West End Gallery.  Twenty two years ago, I showed my work in public for the first time at the Little Gems show. Since that time it has come to be the kick off point for my work year, as it is this year.  It is always one of my favorite shows.

After the Little Gems my next show is my annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.  This year’s show open on Friday, June 2.  This exhibit will be my 18th consecutive show at the Principle, going back to my 2000 show, Redtree, one that marked the real beginning of my now signature Red Tree.  My life would be much different without that show.

This is also an important show for me because it requires so much effort and focus, it sets the tone and determines the course for  my entire year.  It is also the show that normally unveils any new directions for my work.

This year’s show is titled Truth & Belief.  These two concepts have been in my thoughts for some time now and I find myself trying to find bits of each in my paintings as I work on them.  While I hope truth and belief are forever intertwined as one, it is now painfully evident that this is not always the case.

It’s that difference between the two concepts that hopefully will create the tension, the darkness beneath the light in my work.

My annual show at the West End Gallery opens Friday, July 14.  I have to double-check, but I believe this will be my 50th solo show— obviously not all at the West End! But there have been very many there and, as my de facto home gallery, it is always a very important exhibit for me.  You always want to do well in front of your hometown crowd.

This year’s show at the West End is titled Self Preservation.  More on that in the future!

I currently have two Gallery Talks scheduled. I have come to look upon them as some of the highlights of my year.  I like the challenge of them and the fact that they often are just a lot of fun.

This year’s Gallery Talks are:

*West End Gallery on Saturday, August 5.

 *Principle Gallery on Saturday, September 16.

There are some other things coming.  For example, my work is featured in an article in the Summer edition of Acrylic Artist Magazine. Plus, there are a few other things in the works.

And, as is normal, my work will be regularly on display at the galleries that represent me during those times when I don’t have a show hanging.

I guess I better get to work.

Posted in Painting | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

I Don’t Fear the Dark

January 29, 2017 by redtreetimes

Dr. Seuss Slaying "America First" 1941

Dr. Seuss Slaying “America First” 1941

I don’t fear the dark.

I don’t fear the forest or the city.

I don’t fear being alone.

I don’t fear losing everything or being without.

I do not fear the rain or snow or wind.

I do not fear god.

And I don’t fear terrorists.

And I don’t fear criminals.

And I don’t fear missiles raining down from the sky.

And I don’t fear foreign nations invading this country.

And I sure as hell don’t fear any child or mother or father who flees to this nation to escape war and death.

But what I do fear is your fear.

I fear your cowardice and indifference.

I fear your apathy and distraction.

I fear your tiny attention span and your short-sightedness.

I fear your willingness to accept an evil done in your name.

I fear your preference for dividing people into us and them.

I fear your lack of empathy and compassion.

I fear how you mask your prejudices.

I fear the cruelty of your greed.

I fear your ignorance of your civic responsibilities.

I fear your sense of entitlement.

I fear your indifference to education, history or knowledge.

I fear the blatant stupidity and gullibility you proudly display like a new tattoo.

Don’t mistake this as attack on others– I am as much the you in this as anyone else.

And that is to my great shame.

Our great shame.

Enough is Enough.

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

No more to say.  For this Sunday morning music I am carrying the tone of the above right into the song.  It’s some late Johnny Cash, from his American Recordings period when his scarred voice carried his age and emotion so eloquently.  It’s his cover of I See a Darkness from Bonnie “Prince” Billy  aka Will Oldham with the following as part of its chorus:

Oh, no, I see a darkness.
Did you know how much I love you?
Is a hope that somehow you,
Can save me from this darkness.

Have a day.

 

Posted in Current Events, Music | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Pattern/A Replay

January 28, 2017 by redtreetimes

The painting below, from a few years back, came back to me a while ago and has been living with me in the studio. In the time it has been here it has become one of my favorites.  I find myself scouring it with my eyes on a regular basis, going up and down, letting my eyes follow the path and the lines of the landscape.  Trying to look into the mirror-like pools or the moon, half expecting to see myself looking back from the surface.  I have really fixated on this piece and thought I would put it back into a gallery again, to see if it had anything on someone else that it had on me. So it is at the West End Gallery for a bit. Here’s what I wrote about it a few years back:

GC Myers- Part of the Pattern

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns.  Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns.  If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher.  What we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish.

–Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

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I tend to agree with the snippet above from the Chuck Palahniuk book, Survivor.

Everything is built upon pattern. Who we are and how we behave.  History.  Science.  Music and art.  It is all dictated by patterns.

Most of us don’t dwell too long on identifying patterns in the world around us and some of us will even refuse to acknowledge the predominance of pattern in the world, believing everything is random and chaotic.  I suppose that in itself is part of a pattern, a larger one that is so encompassing that we can’t see it from our vantage point within it.

Just speculating there, of course.

Maybe even trying to break away from the pattern is actually part of the pattern.

All I know is that I am always looking for pattern, even when I’m not really looking.  I call it pattern, rhythm, flow, sense of rightness and other terms,  without knowing why I am drawn to this concept.  It just attracts me in that it is so much part of everything that there must surely be significance.

All of this flowed forward with this new painting, a 4″ by 17″ piece on paper that I’m calling Part of the Pattern.  It’s based on a theme I’ve used several times recently of pools rising through a tall vertical picture plane like ladder rungs. This particular piece was so much more stylized in its forms that it really became more about pattern than subject. I see it both as a landscape and as some sort of underlying pattern that makes up the landscape.  A sort of DNA-like structure on which the world is built. Whatever it is, it holds my eye and makes me keep searching for something in it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

My Alternative Fact of the Week/ #1

January 27, 2017 by redtreetimes

alternative-facts-maine-coon-cat-and-grizzly-bearI am now a truly free man.

When Kellyanne Conway spoke those two words last week it was as though she were old Abe Lincoln speaking the words from the Emancipation Proclamation.

The shackles that bound me have been shattered by my newfound belief in Alternative Facts.

No longer must I be held prisoner to the confines of truth or reality. Facts are now what I want them to be. The world now looks like I feel it should despite any and all evidence to the contrary you might try to put before me.

Gone is the boring concept of a fact only existing in one dimension.  Now we have choices– good , better, and best facts. These facts are mine which means they are the best facts.

Believe me. It’s true.

So, I have therefore decided that I must enlighten the public as to what is really what.  Today begins what will be a series of Alternative Facts. If you’re anything like Sean Spicer, you most likely believe that you know these already.

Today’s Alternative Fact:

The Maine Coon Cat is the Largest Animal in North America.

You probably thought it was some loser bison, moose or bear.  Duh…

I mean, come on, just look at the picture! I normally don’t trust photos ( look at how all of those news and governmental agencies cropped out the many, many millions of the best Americans who packed the Mall on Inauguration Day!)  but in my judgment– and it is factually the best judgment– anyone can see that this is a real photo.

See, the sky is blue.  It’s got to be real.

I have had people tell me– I know for a fact that Bernhard Langer saw it firsthand–that there are gangs of these nasty cats roaming the streets in and around Bangor, Maine. It’s a hellscape up there. They tell me there is a million, maybe a million and a half of these monsters terrorizing the good people, batting cars off the roads like throw toys and devouring school children at bus stops.

Maine Coon Carnage!  It’s true. I have been told by people who would know that they may send in the feds.

This is a fact.  You might try to call me a liar but that just shows how ignorant you are– Liar is not even a real word! That’s another fact! So this has been a two-fer.

You’re welcome.

Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , | 7 Comments »

Maintaining Hope

January 25, 2017 by redtreetimes

GC Myers- Keeping HopeTo be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

——Howard Zinn

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

It’s easy in these times to let ourselves fall prey to our darker emotions.  From both sides of the political spectrum, we revert to anger and hatred, letting those emotions color our view of our every day lives.  These dark emotions begin to crowd in on our lives, preventing us from witnessing the good that exists even during troubled times.

Our better qualities should not be swayed by external forces.  True compassion and empathy is not subject to politics or prejudices.

But, as I said, it’s easy to fall prey to the darkness, to simmer in a stew of anger and fear.  God knows, I have.

But I can’t live that way. I won’t live that way.

I need the joy.  I need to smile and laugh. I need to feel quiet in my inner world. I need to feel the beauty of our humanity.

Anger takes those things from me and I will not have that.

Don’t get me wrong.  This is not a submission to the events currently taking place.  No, my anger remains.  My will to resist and fight against those things that I see as simply wrong remains as strong as ever.

I just refuse to let darkness take over my life, to change who I am– or who I aspire to be– as a person.

And that, in its own way, is a small  victory.

**********

The piece at the top is a new piece, a small 2″ by 6″ painting on paper called “Maintaining Hope.” It is part of the upcoming Little Gems show,  opening February 3 at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY.

 

 

Posted in Current Events, Recent Paintings | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments »

Stand Up

January 24, 2017 by redtreetimes

gc-myers-fausts-guitar-smI was thinking this would be a good morning to share some music. A bit of a getaway. While bouncing around randomly on YouTube, I stumbled across an artist and song I had not heard before even though it is obviously a well known song, given its 27 million views on YouTube. I liked it and thought it might be a nice pick for this morning as I look out at the wet and heavy snow that’s falling outside my studio window.

The song is Stand Up and it is from Hindi Zahra, a French-Moroccan singer.  It has a lovely simplicity and a sound that I very much like. Plus the message in it to stand up is always good advice.

Enjoy and have a good day…

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Hope and Certainty

January 23, 2017 by redtreetimes

GC Myers- Hope and CertaintyHope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
–Vaclav Havel
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Above is a new painting, a 9″ by 12″ canvas, that I am calling Hope and Certainty.  From the moment it was complete I thought of the meaning of this piece in terms of a hopeful look forward.  It was not necessarily optimistic but was simply looking ahead to see a future, even one that was darker and more ominous than the desire contained in the hope.

And this hope was in the certainty that time would heal the open wounds that were with us in the present time.

And that made sense but still didn’t comfort me in the way such a piece or thought might have in the past.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on why this was, why I was still feeling unease and uncertain.

Then I came across the words above from Vaclav Havel, the late Czech president/writer/philosopher/dissident.  It explained this piece and it explained so well the anger of the people in this country and around the world who stand in opposition to [he-who-will-not-be-named-here].  His ascent and the way he has shown how he plans to rule thus far do not make sense, it challenges all that we know to be right and real.

His is a world of alternative facts.

And that takes away all possibility of sense. And with it goes certainty.

We live by rhythms and patterns that have been written into our DNA.  We know that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. That the dark of night will be replaced by the light of day. That the cold of winter will soon give way to the warmth of spring.  That fire is hot and ice is cold. And for the most part, we know that right is good and wrong is bad.

But in a world that challenges the reality of every word in every moment, where falsehoods and lies are expected and accepted, is there is no certainty and thus no sense.

Hope flounders without sense and certainty.  It becomes anger.

So what I am seeing in this painting is the Red Tree trying to find sense, trying to see a pattern or rhythm in the future that lays before it that has hope and certainty.

Now it makes makes sense and I can move into it more easily.

And that is a small victory.

Posted in Current Events, Quote, Recent Paintings | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

The Unwelcome Guest

January 22, 2017 by redtreetimes

GC Myers- The Unwelcome Guest 2017Well, wasn’t that a day yesterday?

Unpresidented.

Actually, every day forward is unpresidented. And yes, I know the difference between the two homophones.

I believe I am using the correct one in this case.

In what may have been the worst first day for any presidency, the Faux One spoke at the CIA where he bragged about his victory, said that we may get another chance to take the Iraqi’s oil and trashed the press for showing photos and figure from his inauguration that didn’t jibe with the alternate reality spinning around in that bigly orange dome.

He then sent his press secretary Sean Spicer out for his first press briefing at the White House.  Spicer kind of looks like the Frank Burns character from the classic M.A.S.H. television series and has what appears to be about the same pettiness, intellect and temperament.  He is thin lipped and thin-skinned.

Spicer came out and attacked the press for its reporting on the size of the inauguration, angrily stating the obvious untruth, “This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”  He gave some misleading and simply wrong figures from the Washington Metro to prove his case.

He personally estimated the crowd at the inauguration to be between 1 and 1.5 million.  I am guessing he wouldn’t be able to get a job guessing weights at the carnival with those keen observation skills. You can read a good article on the known facts of the inauguration in this article from The Atlantic.

Taking no questions, he huffed off the podium.  Again, think Frank Burns stomping out of the Swamp.

Beginning your tenure in that position with provable falsehoods is not an auspicious start.  And there was not a mention from the Faux One or Spicer on the large and peaceful demonstrations against his stated policies taking place within a stone’s throw of the White House as well as across the country and around the world.  Instead of acknowledging the protest and trying to reach out, they instead chose to whine and lie about something so inconsequential as the crowd size for the inauguration in their first day on the job.

Whine and Lie– it’s the new modus operandi.  Either get used to it or support and encourage a free and open press. Yell down every lie ( that’s apparently going to be a full-time job!) and stay engaged.  The unity, good will and energy from yesterday’s demonstrations is worth nothing if it is not continued forward day by day, week by week and month by month until change is truly at hand.

Okay, this week’s Sunday morning musical selection is from one of my favorite albums, Mermaid Avenue. It consists of the unrecorded lyrics of Woody Guthrie as translated though the music of Wilco and Billy Bragg.  This particular song is titled The Unwelcome Guest.  For me, that title could refer to the Faux One taking his place in the Oval Office.  But in the song it refers to a Robin Hood sort of character who travels the world on horseback stealing from the rich to give to the poor.  The rich refer to him as the the Unwelcome Guest and he knows that they will kill him one day.  But he knows that there are many other brave folks willing to take up his mantle and continue his quest.

Yes, they’ll catch me napping one day
and they’ll kill me
And then I’ll be gone but that won´t be my end
For my guns and my saddle will always be filled
By unwelcome travellers and other brave men

And they’ll take the money and spread it out equal
Just like the Bible and the prophets suggest
But the man that go riding to help these poor workers
The rich will cut down like an unwelcome guest

Have a good day. Stay engaged, be vigilant and speak up when faced with lies or hatred.

Posted in Current Events, Music | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

On the Anvil

January 21, 2017 by redtreetimes

anvil-and-hammerLast night I heard journalist/historian Jon Meacham say in reference to [he-who-shall-not-be-named-here] that “character is destiny.”

He pointed out that in his studies of past presidencies, ascending to the office of president only magnified the man’s character already in place.  At the end of their term, the person leaving the office is at their core the same person who entered.

It is not a comforting thought.

Not comforting when you consider the inaugural address he gave, one that George Will (the epitome of conservatism and not liberal in any sense of the word) called most dreadful inaugural address in history.  It so mirrored the inherent dishonesty of his character that the Washington Post actually felt compelled to fact-check it.  It was, as with everything he says,  filled with falsehoods and fear-instilling hyperbole and devoid of all sense of hope or unifying grace.

I’m glad I didn’t watch a single minute of this dark day in our history.

I will not legitimize this faux presidency.

This may offend some people.  Well, most of these same people decided with this election that what they believed was greater than the truth, that facts no longer mattered.

So, in keeping with that rule, while his presidency may exist, I do not believe it to be legitimate.

Unlike [he-who-shall-not-be-named-here] I am willing to take responsibility for my words and actions.  If by some miracle, he changes his stated course and works tirelessly for the good and rights of all Americans, I will admit my mistake.  Gladly.

But given the thought that character is destiny, I don’t think you’ll be hearing my apology any time soon.

Cheri asked me earlier in the week if I was going to be watching the inauguration.  I told her that I would rather place a body part on an anvil and play the Anvil Chorus on it with an 8 pound hammer.  I am not saying what body part to which I was referring.

I could have meant my hand. Get your mind out of the gutter!

To illustrate my point here’s a clip from The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles as they perform the Anvil Chorus from Verdi’s Il Trovatore.

 

 

Posted in Current Events, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

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