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Dig a Little Deeper

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- In the Pocket of Time sm

In the Pocket of Time, 2014

The crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. As our soils and rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all men’s thinkings run laterally, never vertically.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Method of Nature (1841)

I came across the passage above from an Emerson essay and decided to look it up to find the context from which it came. It originated in an essay/oration that was written in the 1839-1841 period and was titled The Method of Nature.

I am still trying to glean the exact meaning of the essay but the section that contained the line above speaks about how those who, in any time, claim to have the answers to existential questions or insights into the deepest concerns of mankind eventually reveal themselves to be superficial. Their thoughts seldom, if ever, dig deeply enough to reveal eternal truths that might unify all people and times.

As he put it, their thinking runs laterally, not vertically.

I immediately felt that this might be applied to the painting the top, In the Pocket of Time. It’s a painting (30″ by 24″ on canvas) from 2014 that I brought to the Principle Gallery this past weekend as part of a group of work featured at my Gallery Talk there. It is from a subset of my Archaeology series that I call my Strata work. It is much like the Archaeology pieces without evidence of humans, focusing instead on the layers below the surface.

This particular painting from that Strata series has been with me for a while now. It hung for the last few years in a back bedroom/storage space of my studio. It reminds me of fine wine as it seems to get better with time. I am more and more struck by its surface finish and the rhythm of the strata, as well as how well it transmits its feeling and message from the wall. It’s a piece that speaks directly to me.

Putting Emerson’s thought to it deepened my appreciation of it. I could see in it how we deal always with what is presented on the surface and how seldom we recognize how much more there is to discover if we would only dig a little deeper.

That might be a gross simplification. Or not. Who knows? The words and the mage just seemed to click for me and maybe that’s enough to say.

Let’s tie this up with some music. Here’s a 1992 song from Peter Gabriel titled Digging in the Dirt.  The video is from the same time frame as his Sledgehammer song/video and, like it, this video has some interesting visuals.

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Harmonia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 27, 2024| 1 Comment »

GC Myers-- Harmonia 2024

Harmonia— Coming to Principle Gallery

When we speak of man, we have a conception of humanity as a whole, and before applying scientific methods to, the investigation of his movement we must accept this as a physical fact. But can anyone doubt to-day that all the millions of individuals and all the innumerable types and characters constitute an entity, a unit? Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole?

For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.

–Nikola Tesla, The Problem of Increasing Human Energy

This is another new painting that is headed to the Principle Gallery with me tomorrow as part of a group of new work. It is titled Harmonia and is 8″ by 8″ on panel. Like a few other of the new pieces, this has an smooth untextured surface that gives it a very glass-like appearance. This is especially so with the transparency of the paints which allows the white ground underneath to shine through, producing an effect as though the piece is lit from behind.

That’s something that I always aim for in my work. When it appears, it shows itself in lesser or greater magnitudes. I think this one is on the higher end. It has a very striking appearance, much more so in person than in the image shown here. Sometimes a photograph loses some of the fullness of a painting, flattening out the colors and not fully capturing their depths, intensity or transparency. I think that is the case here.

The title comes from a belief of mine that is very much attached to the words above from Nikola Tesla, that we are all as one. It’s the same sentiment that echoes from poet John Donne:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

That is the feeling I get from this piece, that as much as we try to isolate ourselves from the world we are forever attached to and affected by this connection. We live our best lives when we recognize this and achieve some sort of harmony — or should I say truce– between ourselves and the world. It’s a matter of giving everyone and everything the same degree of respect and kindness that we expect to be given by others. 

It’s another form of the old love-thy-neighbor adage. It’s been around forever because it contains an eternal truth. Harmony, both inner and outer, might be the prescription for all that ails us. That’s the easy part.

Finding it is another story. But like anything, once you know what you seek it becomes easier to find.

Speaking of harmony, here’s a song that practically oozes with it. It’s Helplessly Hoping from Crosby, Stills and Nash.

TOMORROW!!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28

GALLERY TALK at the PRINCIPLE GALLERY

 GOOD CONVERSATION, ART, SOME LAUGHS,

THE CHANCE TO WIN A PAINTING–AND MORE!!!

BEGINS AT 1 PM.

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Unus Mundus

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 26, 2024| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- Between Order and Chaos

Between Order and Chaos– Coming to Principle Gallery

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

–Carl Jung

I am busy getting ready this morning for the Gallery Talk I will be presenting this coming Saturday, September 28, at the Principle Gallery, beginning at 1 PM. Part of this preparation is finishing new work and packing up that work as well as the painting that will be given away in a free drawing for those at the talk, along with a few other surprises. You have to come to the talk to know what those will be.

GC Myers- Point of Contact 2016

Point of Contact — You Could Win It!

Along with the new work, I am also bringing four favorites of mine from the past decade. One is the painting above, Between Order and Chaos, shown above. It is a piece that jumped out at me in many ways since it was first painted. The post below from a couple of years back explains one of those aspects.

There is a philosophical concept called Unus Mundus— Latin for One World. Its premise is basically that behind the evident chaos of this world and the universe there is a unifying realm of absolute knowledge on which all existence is based.

It has been around for ages, going back in some form to the ancient Greeks. In the last century, Carl Jung became the biggest advocate of this theory, using it to explain the similarity in the content and construct of the myths and stories of the cultures and their belief systems. Each represents the discovery of some small bit of the order or pattern contained in chaos surrounding this world and becomes a recurring symbol, forming what Jung termed as an archetype. 

I describe an archetype as being how there are universal reactions and interpretations to certain images. One of the main reasons I use the Red Tree and the Red Roof, the Red Chair, and the ball in the sky that serves as the sun/moon is that each translates seamlessly across cultures. You don’t need specific cultural knowledge to understand the reality they symbolize. Each carries universal meaning.

This theory, the Unus Mundus, is what I see as the force behind the new painting at the top, Between Order and Chaos. It’s about how we struggle to create order in the face of constant chaos (represented in the sky’s slashing marks) with the orderliness of the flower beds representing this attempt.

The round flower bed caught in the curve of the path echoes the sun above. I see it somewhat as a symbol of synchronicity, another term coined by Jung. He uses it to explain some coincidences that seem to have some sort of meaning though there is no explanation for this feeling.

A coincidence might be just that or it might be that we have unwittingly come in contact with a strand of the Unus Mundus.

I sometimes feel as I have had fleeting moments of synchronicity but I can’t be sure of that.

How does one really know such a thing?

And I can’t say that we will ever learn more about or understand the Unus Mundus or the meaning of synchronicity, even though it might be for the betterment of us all as a species.

Perhaps we have become too comfortable living in this slice of the universe between order and chaos?

I don’t know. But for now, it’s all we have.

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Celebratio

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Point of Contact 2016

Point of Contact — Grand Prize at Saturday’s Gallery Talk

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.

–Carl Sagan, Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

I will be giving a Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery, beginning at 1 PM. I’ve been doing these talks at the Alexandria, VA gallery since 2003, with the only break coming during the pandemic. I enjoy these events, getting to speak with folks, answering some questions, and hopefully sharing some stories or information that is new to those in attendance.

I also have made a habit of giving away some things, including the painting chosen for this year’s event, shown at the top. This piece, Point of Contact, is one that is near and dear to me, which is why it was chosen. I’ve pointed out a number of times here that I only choose work to give away that has meaning to me.

GC Myers- Celebratio sm

Celebratio– Coming to the Principle Gallery

I’ve always believed that real giving has to hurt a bit in order to have real meaning. That’s the case with this piece for me.

I am also readying a group of new work to bring along on Saturday. Mixed in with this group are a few favorite pieces from the past decade. One, Celebratio,  10″ by 20″ on canvas, shown here on the right, is from the same time frame, 2016, as Point of Contact. It slipped under the radar at the time, getting limited exposure in the galleries. Inexplicably, it was never shown at the Principle Gallery or even shared here on this blog. but has become a favorite of mine here in the studio in recent years.

But it has become a favorite of mine here in the studio in recent years. Maybe it is the joy I see in it that inspired its title. It always lifts my spirits and that’s saying a lot, considering what has occurred in the world in the past eight years since it was created.

I like to think that it echoes the words of Carl Sagan at the top of the page, that it represents the coming to an understanding and merging of oneself with the magnificence of the Cosmos.

A reason for celebration, indeed.

Hope you can make it to the Gallery Talk on Saturday.

Here’s a song from Sly & The Family Stone that I think meshes pretty well with Celebratio. Like the painting, I was surprised to find that I have never shared this song on this site.

Better late than never, as they say…

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Comes a Wind

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 13, 2024| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Comes a Wind 2024

Comes a Wind— Now at Principle Gallery

That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.

—Lydia Maria Child, Letters from New York (1843)

Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals!

Is there any better advice than those words from Lydia Maria Child way back in 1843? She is best known for writing the famous Thanksgiving poem, Over the River and Through the Woods. But more than that, she was a forward thinker in her time– an abolitionist, women’s rights and Native American rights activist, journalist, poet and novelist whose work often took on white supremacy and male dominance, issues that plague us to this day.

She would no doubt be a forward thinker in our time. Her words certainly ring true, then and now.

I am using her words today to accompany the new painting above, Comes a Wind. It’s one of the larger pieces, 30″ by 48″ on canvas, from my Principle Gallery show that opens tomorrow night. I chose her words because I felt they somewhat described how I view my landscape work. I never have tried to imitate the reality nature, never wanting exactitude or even a representation of a single real location.

I just wanted to capture the feel and rhythm of the landscape. We live in it and with it. We are part of it, carrying that same feel and rhythm within us. At least, that’s the hope. I believe we sometimes lose that feel and rhythm that connects us to the land. We fail to see the grace and inevitability of nature. When left to its own devices, the landscape achieves an organic perfection.

It is as it should be and only as it can be.

I think this piece is a great example at my attempt to capture that feel and rhythm. It has an organic quality in the curves and lines of the landforms that calms me in much the same way that I feel looking at a panoramic landscape in reality. Like much of my work, there is an area somewhere near the center of the landscape where the landscape’s layers go down then rises up, creating what I call the saddle or easy chair (taken from an old Dylan song) of the painting. I don’t know exactly why I do that, but it feels like it acts as place for the eye to settle in and rest, like one might in a saddle. Or easy chair.

When I first finished this painting, I saw it as being about some forewarning brought on the wind. I still see that somewhat but I now also see the wind as pictured as being about letting ourselves go with the rhythms of nature, about reconnecting to our place within the greater forces.

Or as Ms. Child may have put it: Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals!

Here’s that Bob Dylan song with the easy chair reference, You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere. From1967, it was part of his Basement Tapes and more famously recorded by the Byrds in 1968. This is a newer version that I like very much from Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. It’s a great tune. Worth a listen.

Comes a Wind is included in Continuum: The Red Tree at 25 which opens tomorrow, Friday, June 14, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria. The opening reception runs from 6-8:30 PM on Friday. I will be there so please stop in and check out the show. Maybe have a chat.

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Continuum/A Preview

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 12, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers-- Flame Feeding Flame 2024

Flame Feeding Flame— At the Principle Gallery

I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being.

-Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

A couple of days before the Principle Gallery show opens. I am, of course, filled with anxiety. It’s to the point that I find myself leery about writing anything about this show.

I know that in the greater scheme of things, this show and all I do is insignificant. But every show from any artist has great significance and meaning to that artist. The artist defines themself and what they do by how their work is received in the world. You try to act like it doesn’t matter what people think of your work or how they respond to it but that is just a mask.

You want people to like and respond to it, especially when you feel the work is among your best.

But sometimes the artist’s perception of the work and that of the viewing public don’t correspond. The artist might be responding to some personal prompts within the work that don’t mean anything to others. Maybe it is too close, too personal, to the artist. I guess that is why I worry so much when I feel that a group of work is exceptionally strong.

Maybe it is work meant for only me. I don’t think that’s the case with this show. I hope it isn’t but don’t really have a way of knowing.

I find that you don’t have to prepare to be pleased by how a show turns out, but disappointment takes some preparation. So, I spend these days before any show getting ready for that result, creating rationales that will sooth me. That way, I’m ready.

After 25 years, you would think this horrid angst would have gone away by now. But it never does. It’s a funny and maddening thing, this art gig. The best and the worst.

Here’s a slideshow preview of the work from the show. Take a look. I promise you that this is a mere echo of how it looks in person.

The painting at the top is Flame Feeding Flame, a 30″ by 40″ canvas included in the show. The show is called Continuum: The Red Tree at 25 which opens Friday, June 14, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria. The opening reception runs from 6-8:30 PM on Friday. I invite you to come to the gallery to see if I can cover up my anxiety.

The flop sweat might give me away.

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Cezanne on Feeling

Posted in Painting, Quote, Video, tagged , , , , on May 21, 2021| 2 Comments »

Cezanne- The Kitchen Table 1888-1890

Paul Cézanne– The Kitchen Table, 1888-1890

An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all… feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique – all these are in the middle.

-Paul Cézanne

Since I am a little short on time this morning as I am in the final days of wrapping up my approaching Principle Gallery show before delivery later this weekend, I thought I’d share a thought from Paul Cézanne that pretty much sums up my view on art, that feeling and emotion is the primary driver behind all art.

Here’s a short video of some of of Cezanne’s better known works for you to examine for their levels of feeling.

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How To Be Alone

Posted in Biographical, Motivation, Poetry, Video, tagged , , , , on April 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers-The Fulfillment sm

“The Fulfillment”- Now at the West End Gallery

Take your hand
and place your hand
some place
upon your body.
And listen
to the community of madness
that
you are.

—How To Be Alone, Pádraig Ó Tuama

I am up and alone in the studio at 4:30 this morning, eager to get a brush in my hand. It might sound crazy but that doesn’t matter to me right now. I am excited about the work for my Principle Gallery show in June that I am working on and feel a compulsion to keep at it out of the fear that this feeling will soon pass.

But for as excited as I am still about the new work, I am not ready to show a lot of it quite yet. Something makes me want to hold most of it back for a bit, as though showing too much of it will somehow diminish the impact of it as a whole. Actually, the gallery hasn’t even seen a lot of this work, probably for that same reason.

I’ve spent more time already from this early morning than I had wanted before I get to work so I will get to the point of this post. It’s the author’s reading and animation of a piece, How To Belong Be Alone, from Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama. It’s a wonderful short poem that speaks to the need to belong which is similar to that driving need to have my voice heard that brought me to painting.

Some days I find myself questioning whether that need to have my voice heard is a necessity or a product of ego. I mean, here I sit writing about my paintings. Isn’t that an act of ego?

Part of me says that it is. But part of me rejects that idea. After all, we all need to know that our voices are heard, that our existence matters, that we belong in this world. Maybe if I believed that my voice or my work deserved to be heard and appreciated above all others or that it mattered more than that of anyone else, maybe then it would be an act of ego.

But I don’t believe that. We all deserve to let the world hear the voice of our unique selves. Each is as valid and valuable as the next.

I think this poem speaks well to this point.

… listen to the community of madness that you are.

Okay, got to get to work. before I burst. Take a look please.

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What the beeple?

Posted in Current Events, tagged , , , , , on March 13, 2021| 13 Comments »

Beeple- “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”

“I’ve crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I’ve come to a place I never thought I’d have to come to. And I don’t know how I got here. It’s a strange place. It’s a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.”

― Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories

I don’t know about the death and annihilation part but somedays I wake up and feel as though I have stumbled into an alternate reality where there are things going on that baffle me completely, that don’t have any basis in the world from which I come.

Like I am a goat farmer from the late 1700’s who has suddenly been thrown through time and ends up in the middle of a Times Square with huge walls of lights flashing, cars whooshing by and jets thundering overhead. 

The place and everything associated with it  just doesn’t line up with anything I know or have ever seen. I am confused, to say the least. Maybe even a little scared because if I don’t know what the hell it is, I have no idea if it can hurt me.

That is exactly the feeling I had when I read that on Thursday a piece of digital art, an NFT— a non-fungible token— had sold in auction at Christie’s for $69 million. The artist’s is Mike Winkelman who goes by the name Beeple and he is a digital artist from Charleston, SC who until October of 2020 had never sold a print for more than $100.

Then came NFTs. Those cuddly non-fungible tokens.

Here’s where I fall through time and space.

I wish I could explain it to you but it feels like the translation of a language I’ve never heard of translated into a language that was just invented and is, yes, unknown to me.

The only thing I understand is the concept of attaching value to an object that is not contained in the value of the raw materials or labor that made it. That is the definition of art and most collectibles. For example, a painting is a token in that it has value attached to it.  But a painting that sells for $100 million dollars is not much different in real world terms from one that sells for $10,000.

The difference is that there is a higher value attached by the market– the potential buyers– that reflects its history, the artist’s reputation, its rarity and provenance and whatever the heck makes a painting worth $100 million. But even then, after the huge piles of cash have been exchanged, the buyer still has a tangible object in their hands.

Probably a closer analogy to NFTs is collectible cards like baseball cards. They are nothing more than a penny’s worth of cheap cardboard with an image printed on one side and some stats on the back. But value is somehow added to them to the point that some are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars while most end up propping up off level tables.

I still don’t know if I am explaining this well. Remember, I just got into this century from the 1788 with goat dung on my boots. Which makes the next part even more difficult to explain.

These NFTs are attached and sold via blockchain technology. Like cryptocurrency. Bitcoin. Ethereum. You know what I’m talking about, right?

I think Yogi Berra would be better equipped to explain this.

I tried at one point a couple of years ago to better understand cryptocurrency but I just couldn’t fully grasp it. It seemed so much like a giant pyramid scheme. But what made it even harder to grasp was that there are actually bitcoin mines.

Yeah, bitcoin mines.

I am standing here with goat stink still on me and I am trying to grasp the idea that bitcoins are mined — created, actually– by people around the world trying to solve the same mathematical puzzle using very large and powerful computers. About every 10 minutes, someone solves a puzzle and is rewarded with some bitcoins. Then, a new puzzle is generated, and the whole process starts over again. As more people become involved around the globe trying to solve this puzzle, it is made more difficult so that it is estimated that it will take ten minutes to come up with the new solution.

Every ten minutes. So, in order to be the first to solve this puzzle and get the bitcoins, one has to have computers that use enormous amounts of electricity. We are talking something on the order of 72 terawatts expended to create a single bitcoin. That is 72 trillion watts of electricity. Every ten minutes.

This first came to my attention when I learned that there was a proposal for a bitcoin mine to be built on nearly Seneca Lake. If I am not mistaken, it would use the water from the lake to run a hydroelectric generator to produce the huge amount of power needed for its computers. 

I still am in the dark on this and can’t even begin to explain blockchain technology. Remember, I am from a time when the Snickers Bar was still a 150 years from being developed and marketed. That’s a technology I can understand and maybe even explain.

So, here I am wondering how a digital file that anyone can download and display is somehow valued by its owner, a person who shelled out $69 million bucks. I really am confused and have all sorts of questions. 

Can this affect my own work? Might my work be stolen– this has happened to other artists– via these NFTs? What does this mean for the future of art? With all due respect to his talent, Beeple is now one of the most valuable artists in the history of art. I think that’s a statement even he would find laughable. Granted, its a lot easier to laugh with $69 mil in the bank. Or is it in cryptocurrency?

Good for Beeple. But the real question is: How do I do this?

The price for goat feed is a lot higher than it was in 1788.

I think I will go outside and bang my head against a tree. Now that I understand.

 

 

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In Radiance

Posted in Advice, Quote, tagged , , , on August 4, 2020| 4 Comments »

“In Radiance”- Now at the West End Gallery

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

Change the focus of the eye. When you have done that, then the end of the world as you formerly knew it will have occurred, and you will experience the radiance of the divine presence everywhere, here and now.

–Joseph Campbell
.
*********************
Change the focus of the eye.
.
Is that the purpose of art? It makes sense. Through the years, many artists have talked about painting beyond what is there, painting the invisible, the intangible.
.
To make the viewer see the ordinary in a new or extraordinary way.
.
Sounds easy enough, right?  Well, it can be done but you don’t always find the divine radiance of all things. That can be frustrating and unfulfilling. But on those times when you do, you understand what Joseph Campbell was describing. And it drives you on.
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Change the focus of the eye. It most likely applies to life in general, as well. I will have to try that.

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