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Magritte/ Poetry for the Unknown

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 9, 2025| 3 Comments »

The Happy Donor— Rene Magritte

I conceive of the art of painting as the science of juxtaposing colours in such a way that their actual appearance disappears and lets a poetic image emerge. . . . There are no “subjects”, no “themes” in my painting. It is a matter of imagining images whose poetry restores to what is known that which is absolutely unknown and unknowable.

–Rene Magritte, 1967, In a letter two months prior to his death

I am getting ready for my annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery. This year’s edition, Entanglement, my 26th such show at the Alexandria, VA gallery, opens five weeks from today on Friday, June 13th. I will also be doing a Painting Demonstration at the gallery the following Saturday, June 14, from 11AM until 1 PM. There is still a ton of work to be done so I am simply sharing a reworked post from several years back.

The quote above from Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte reminds me of an instance where I didn’t fully get across what I was trying to communicate in response to a question while speaking to a group. It occurred at a demonstration and talk I gave before a regional arts group consisting of enthusiastic painters, some amateurs and some professional.

While I was working, a question was brought up about the importance of subject. Magritte elegantly stated in his words what I was trying to say that evening, that the purpose of what I was doing was not in the actual portrayal of the object of the painting but in the way it was expressed through color and form and contrast. To me, the subject was not important except as a vehicle for carrying emotion.

Of course, I didn’t state it with any kind of coherence or clarity. Hearing me say that the subject wasn’t important visibly angered the man who was an art teacher and an accomplished lifelong painter of realistic landscapes. He said that the subject was most important in forming your painting. I fumbled around for a bit and don’t think I ever satisfied his question or got across a bit of what I was attempting to say.

I think he was still mad when he left which still bothers me because he was right, of course. Subject is certainly important. It is the artist’s relationship that with the subject and the emotional response it elicits that allows the artist to create this poetry of the unknown, as Magritte may have put it.

While I am not interested in depicting landscapes of specific areas, I am moved by the rolls of hills and fields and the stately personae of trees that populate my work. I believe it comes through in my painting. Yes, I can capture emotion in things that may not have any emotional attachment to me through the way I am painting them, which was part of what I was saying to that man that evening, but it will never be as fully realized as those pieces which consist of things and places in which I maintain a personal relationship. It is always easier to find the poetry of the unknown in those things which we know.

But there is a caveat: The subject is often not the tree or the landscape, as much as it may seem the case. Often, it is the vague poetry made from that tree, the sky, the landscape, or whatever is chosen to paint along with things not visibly apparent that makes up the atmosphere of the painting.

That poetry is the real subject of a painting. 

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Trip the Light Fantastic

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 6, 2025| 5 Comments »

Trip the Light Fantastic— Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2025

Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastick toe…

–John Milton, L’Allegro, (1645)

Trip the light fantastic. From Milton’s 1645 poem, it originally meant to dance nimbly. But for some reason, perhaps its phrasing or the derivations of the term over the centuries, it’s a term that summons up all sorts of images in my mind. But for the purpose of the new painting shown here, nimbly dancing might well fit as a description.

Using the phrase as its title definitely came to mind as the painting took on its final form. With the lively, rhythmic spirals and bright undercolor in the sky along with the rolling undulations of the sea, there is a feeling of a dance of sorts in piece for me. Of movement and countermovement, of rhythm matching rhythm and the joy that comes when that movement seemingly becomes effortless.

As though the two rhythms have become one.

As you may know, I am not a sailor. So, I can only imagine that there are those magical moments when the sea, the winds, and the sailor feel as one. I would imagine that would be an exhilarating feeling of unbridled joy and freedom.

That’s what I see in this piece. I feel lightened and brightened by it. But that’s just me…

This painting, Trip the Light Fantastic, is 15″ by 30″ on canvas and is from my annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. This year’s exhibit, my 26th there, is titled Entanglement and opens on Friday, June 13. Much of the work in this year’s show deals thematically with the bands and tangles of energy that make up everything, including us in our human form.

Much of it entails representing that energy in the sky of these pieces in a variety of ways– as twisting knot-like ribbons without beginning or end or cacophonous bands that interweave over and under one another. There are also some, such as this painting, that employ colorful rhythmic spirals.

It all makes for a striking look in each piece, one that make me really stop and consider each. The skies are often the central figures in this work, as much as the boat or the Red Tree or the house, and it’s hard to not dwell on finding some sort of meaning in them. There’s an almost meditative, therapeutic feel in many of these pieces for myself, both in the painting and the viewing.

Does that translate to other viewers? I don’t know. And maybe that doesn’t matter in the long run. It felt like I didn’t have any choice but to paint these pieces.  In some weird way, they demanded to be painted at this point in time.

Maybe I needed them for some reason. Some purpose.

I haven’t figured out the why of this. I only have the what at this point. And maybe, like so many things, I will never get the answer I seek. Maybe I am supposed to only ask the question.

If that’s the case, so be it. I am satisfied in continuing my search without answers if every so often I get to trip the light fantastic…

 

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Gaining Understanding

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 2, 2025| 2 Comments »

Gaining Understanding— Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2025

“Accustom yourself every morning to look for a moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor. You will find every day that the gable of every house has its own particular look, its own special lighting. Pay it some heed…you will have for the rest of the day a remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. Gradually and without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights.”

–Hermann Hesse, My Belief: Essays on Life and Art

I am going to take a short break from the blog to try to catch up on painting and other preparation for my June solo show, Entanglement, at the Principle Gallery. I feel like I am behind schedule but can’t tell if that is reality or just a feeling, maybe a by-product of pre-show anxiety. I just get the sense at the moment that I at least need to feel like I am caught up.

I didn’t want to leave without sharing a new painting from the Principle Gallery show. The piece at the top is one of the smaller paintings, 10″ by 10″ on wood panel, from the exhibit. I call it Gaining Understanding.

I thought the passage above, especially that first sentence, from Hermann Hesse was appropriate for this painting. It also pretty much describes my early morning walk through the woods to the studio, usually in darkness. So often I stop along the way and look through the trees at the sky. The bracing coolness of the forest air on my skin, which is still warm from sleep, is refreshing.

I find that I feel closer to some kind understanding on those days when I start them in this way. I feel sharper, more in tune with something beyond me. It has a calming effect that seems to slow time a bit.

This small painting reflects that feeling for me.

I’m going to leave it at that before taking this short break. Well, I’ll throw in a song as well. This is If I Could Only Fly from the late Blaze Foley. He’s probably not on your radar, unless you’re in Texas or have followed Outlaw Country or Americana music for a long time. Foley died in a shooting in 1989 at the age of 40, never really achieving wider notoriety. But his music lives on, providing a rich legacy, as do the many quirky stories of his life. As the late Townes Van Zandt said of Foley, “He’s only gone crazy once. Decided to stay.” The writing in this song and his enunciation reminds me greatly of the late John Prine which makes sense as Prine recorded Foley’s song Clay Pigeons for a 2006 album.

I’ll be back soon. Thanks!

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Van Gogh: The Pictures I Might Have Made…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 29, 2025| 3 Comments »

Vincent Van Gogh- Memory of the Garden at Etten (1888)

My aim in life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life… looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, ‘Oh, the pictures I might have made!’ But this does not exclude making what is possible…

–Vincent Van Gogh, Letter to Theo van Gogh, 19 November 1883

Love this painting from Vincent Van Gogh with its wonderful color and the abstraction of the forms that comes from eliminating the horizon line. It was a piece that came to mind when I ran across this passage from Van Gogh. The words reminded me of something else, a thought that has been on my mind in recent times.

I was asked at my Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery this past September [2019] if I ever had thoughts of retiring from my painting career. I think I made a bit of a joke about it, saying that I couldn’t afford to retire and would no doubt die while working away at a painting.

And that’s most likely true. I couldn’t imagine ever saying I am done as a painter.

It goes back to Van Gogh’s words above. I still see my artistic future brighter than my past, still envision important projects and better works to come. I still see my best work as being in the future, not dwelling in the distant past.

I can’t imagine that feeling ever changing. I can see myself on the day of my death, if I am capable of taking a moment to reflect on that day, will have that same regret that Van Gogh expressed: Oh, the pictures I might have made!

That being said, I must get to work. I am not retired yet and there are pictures to be made. The future is calling.

I have a few things that need to be done so I am running the post above from five years back. There are a couple of things to add to this post. The Van Gogh quote was taken from a wonderful letter to his brother, Theo, that addresses another question that has often hung with me over the years, that being whether or not I am an artist. I like Van Gogh’s answer that he would rather spend his time thinking about painting than using it to worry about labels or what he might or might not be. That’s pretty much where I have ended up after all these years, not giving a damn what label other might pin on me. I used to worry about whether I deserved to call myself an artist or even what to call whatever style my work might be. I’ll just do what I do and let others sort it out for themselves, if that’s what they want to do.

Let’s also add a song to this mashup. Here’s a song from Leonard Cohen (yay, Canada!) that I have shared a couple of times but by other artists. They were great covers from Willie Nelson and Tom Jones. I loved both but there’s often nothing like the original thing.

Okay. Got to run– the future is still calling…

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Waiting For the End of the World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Waiting For the End of the World – At Principle Gallery, June 2025

Someone called from across the water
‘Are you coming off that island soon?’
I hollered back
‘No, not yet—
I’m waiting for the end of the world.’
Then I turned back to watch the sky
As its currents and clouds
Surged and volleyed
In every way we know
And some we don’t know
And I thought to myself
With the sky racing around me
‘What a fine day it is–
Waiting for the end of the world.’

At the West End Gallery painting demo this past Saturday, someone asked when I titled my paintings, if I ever had title in mind as I worked on a piece. I said that generally it came after the painting was complete, when it was fully formed and whatever it was going to say was written on its surface. I didn’t say it quite that way, of course. 

I added to my answer and spoke about the painting at the top, a small 6″ by 12″ canvas, that is headed to the Principle Gallery for my June show there. I described that, while painting this piece, the verse above came into my head and was all I could think of as I worked. Shifting colors and words, it was a strange collaboration of thoughts for me, as I simultaneously edited and adjusted both the painting and the verse as I worked.

It made the words and the image bind one to the other in my mind.

Now, I realize the title may not seem compatible with the painting at first glance. I initially worried that the title was out of step with the theme of my upcoming show, Entanglement, which is about the unity of all energies and the idea that there is no beginning or end.

But what I see in the painting is a kind of tranquil acceptance of whatever hand fate deals in the here and now. An acceptance that allows you to recognize and appreciate the beauty of this moment and place.

A feeling of oneness with the universe, realizing that the end of the world is not the end of being. 

And that thought is completely in line with the theme of the show.

It’s a simple piece that packs a lot into a small space. But sometimes even the tiniest of things contain all that makes up this universe. As do we all.

Here’s song that I shared about five years back. It’s Push the Sky Away from a 2019 performance at the Sydney Opera House by Nick Cave, pianist Warren Ellis and the Sydney Philharmonic Orchestra. The song was originally from Nick Cave with the Bad Seeds.

Okay, that’s the end. No, not of the world– just this blog post.

But glimpsing out the window, it looks like a fine day to be waiting for the end of the world.

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Thanks!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 27, 2025| 2 Comments »

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

–G. K. Chesterton, A Short History of England (1917)

Many, many, many thanks to everyone who came out yesterday morning for the painting demonstration I gave at the West End Gallery. I know how precious time is so the idea that such a lovely group of people chose to spend a good portion of their Saturday watching me work blows me away. It was wonderful group that was attentive, inquisitive, gracious, and fun, with friends coming from as far away as Toronto, Syracuse and Binghamton for the event. 

I was nervous at the prospect of painting in front of a group, but these folks quickly alleviated my jitters with their easy laughter and questions.  I started the demo with a 12″ by 16″ canvas that had been prepped with multiple layers of gesso then a final layer of deep purple paint. Since I was determined to get as far into the painting as I could during the demo I painted faster than I normally would in the studio. I had decided that I would employ a blockish style in the sky that I sometimes use as it would get maximum surface coverage in the shortest time. The blocks were slapped in in multiple colors that often had a flat appearance to me at first.  That would be rectified in subsequent layers.

I had a vague idea of how I would compose the landscape below the sky but that was thrown out the window as I worked. Adjusting on the fly is often the case with my work. I opted for a simpler landscape with patchwork fields that is seen in much of my work. I asked the group if they would prefer the landscape with hills in the distance and they said yes to that. I blocked those in and then began shaping the landscape with payer of lighter colors.

I hustled along and finally decide to finish up with the prerequisite Red Tree. Of course, I had inadvertently forgot to pack the particular red that has been the staple for my red trees for the past 25 years. But as I said, art is seldom done under perfect conditions and often requires working with what is at hand. I ended up using a crimson that was a little heavier bodied and darker than I would normally use.

Without getting into all the details, the piece was more or less finished after a little before 1 PM. I was as surprised as anyone. I hadn’t anticipated getting anywhere near completion on this painting.

All in all, I am very pleased with the result. The image at the top shows how the demo piece turned out. Though it has a look of completion, it needs a bit of work before I would call it done. There are a number of areas in it that need to be refined and just looking at the painting now I see a number of small changes and adjustments that will be made. That includes reshaping and repainting the crown of the Red Tree which is not quite as expressive as I would like. As I said, I was hurrying a bit at the end in order to get to some form of completion.

All in all, I think the demo went well. I think it gave some insight into how this type of my work comes about and how creative decisions are made along the way in making any piece. It showed how the work seldom if ever proceeds in a straight line from beginning to end and that it is the ability to adjust and adapt that transforms a piece. 

Thank you once more for everyone that showed up yesterday. You made my task much easier and, while I can’t speak for you, you made it fun for me. And as fun is sometimes a rare commodity these days, I really appreciate that part of yesterday.

And a special Thank You to Jesse and Lin at the West End Gallery for coaxing me out of my cave for the day. Maybe we will do it again sometime in the future. Maybe with the other style, the wet work in transparent inks, that I began my career with. We’ll see…

Here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music. It’s Bonnie Raitt’s cover of Thank You (that fits the theme here, right?) which was written by Isaac Hayes and famously recorded by the great Sam & Dave.

Thank you!

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Painting Demo Today!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I am giving a painting demonstration this morning at the West End Gallery in Corning. It begins at 10 AM and ends somewhere between noon and 1 PM. I realize that most folks will not be able to make it to the gallery today so I thought it might not be a bad idea to share a blog post from a number of years back, from early 2013, that gives a glimpse into how I work, though it doesn’t show the entire process from start to finish. For today’s demo, the painting I will be working on will be smaller than this and will be a simpler composition that will hopefully allow me to get further along in the process in the allotted time.

There will be other differences, of course, but you will have to be at the West End Gallery this morning to see that. The doors open at 9:45 so that attendees can claim a seat, which are limited in number, if they wish. Or they can stand and go back and forth between the artists that will be giving demos today. I will be painting on the 2nd floor of the gallery and painter Gina Pfleegor will be in the Main Gallery beginning at 10 AM. We will be joined around 11 AM by Trish Coonrod who will be working on the 2nd floor with me. And at 2 PM watercolorist Judy Soprano comes in take over and finish out the day. It should be informative, interesting, and maybe even a little bit of fun. Hope you can make it!

gc-myers-feb-2013-1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

gc-myers-feb-2013gc-myers-feb-2013-wipgc-myers-feb-2013-2wipgc-myers-game-of-life-small

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Contradictions: Reality/Unreality

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Between the Sea and the Sun– Now at West End Gallery

Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.

–Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

I’ve been thinking about contradictions lately, mainly in those contradictions that exist between our perceptions and reality. Most of us can easily see these sorts of contradictions in ourselves. Well, at least I think most of us can. Actually, for all I know, maybe most folks don’t see any difference in how they see themselves and how they really are. That would explain a lot.

But manly I have been thinking about contradiction as it occurs in art. I think the passage above from The Brothers Karamazov articulates this pretty well. Often art creates forms of beauty that challenge us with contradictions between what we know in our mind and what we perceive with our senses.

For my work, it comes in forms, colors, sizes, perspectives, omissions, and other aspects that one knows, when one really considers them, are unreal. They do not or cannot exist in reality in the way they are shown. The contradiction comes in the fact that this unreality is often perceived as a reality by the mind.

I realized this for myself a long time ago. The work always translated as reality to me, whether there were blue treeless hills, brightly colored patchwork fields, giant suns, or trees whose proportions sometimes defied perspective.

It basically straddled the boundary between reality and the totally fantastic, that area where those two contradictory terms meet and coexist. Unreality becomes reality. That area where what the mind knows (or believes) is nonsense begins to make sense.

As I have said in the past at Gallery Talks while groping to explain this, I never questioned the reality of what I painted. It always translated immediately in my mind as being reality.

It just was, despite all evidence to the contrary. The coming together of reality and unreality, which might well be used to define all art.

You know, I wasn’t planning on writing anything this morning and this thing just popped out. I hope it makes sense. Maybe it’s art because in my head it does…

Okay, I have to go get stuff around for tomorrow’s painting demo at the West End Gallery. It begins at 10 AM and goes to around 12 and maybe a little later, depending on how it is going. If it’s going well, I might keep working. If not, I might set the damn thing on fire right then and there. Just kidding– I would take it out of the gallery before setting it ablaze. Hope to see you there!

Here’s a song that caught my eye this morning. I didn’t think I had ever heard of it before, but the chorus made me think I had heard it at least once or twice. It sounded familiar. It’s a 1966 song called Painter Man from a group called The Creation. This group claimed that their music was as much visual as it was musical and sometimes had a member of the group painting while they played on stage.

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Demo Prep/ Sand Dabs, Five

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 24, 2025| 2 Comments »

Eye to the Future— At West End Gallery

You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence,
serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but
I’ll take it.

— Mary Oliver, Sand Dabs, Five

I am getting ready for a painting demonstration I am giving on Saturday at the West End Gallery, beginning at 10 AM. This event is part of the Arts in Bloom Art Trail of Chemung and Steuben County which involves open tours of artists’ studios and events such as this in the area’s art galleries.

As I mentioned before, I seldom paint in front of people and am a little self-conscious as a result. Even more so when at one point on Saturday painters Trish Coonrod and Gina Pfleegor will also be showing off their prodigious talents. Both paint in a more traditional manner at a very high level of skill. I think of Trish’s talents as one would of a grandmaster pianist and Gina’s as that of a highly trained operatic soprano or a golden voiced chanteuse.

Me? I think of myself as a guy with an old and out of tune guitar who knows maybe three or four chords. Sings a little off key. What I lack in skill I try to make up for with the 3 E’s— effort, emotion, and earnestness. 

I do whatever it takes to find something on that surface in front of me. It’s kind of like the line at the top from poet Mary Oliver— I’m forever looking for serendipity or, on those special days, grace to show up before me in the paint. There’s a lot of time when its appearance is an uncertainty and it can take some time to coax it out into the open. 

My hope is that it will choose to show up during the few hours I will be working on Saturday. I am still trying to decide if I should have a plan on how or what I will paint or if I should just let serendipity and grace decide for me. I am leaning toward the latter just because that path can sometime be the most exciting.

We’ll see what happens Saturday morning. I am hoping grace shows up for a brief visit.

I am sharing the rest of the Mary Oliver poem, Sand Dabs, Five, from which the line at the top was taken. I think that I could apply much of what it expresses to what I am trying to say as an artist., particularly those final lines.

 

Sand Dabs, Five

Mary Oliver

 

What men build, in the name of security, is built of straw.

*

Does the grain of sand know it is a grain of sand?

*

My dog Ben — a mouth like a tabernacle.

*

You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence,
serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but
I’ll take it.

*

The pine cone has secrets it will never tell.

*

Myself, myself, myself, that darling hut!
How quick it will burn!

*

Death listens
to the hum and strike of my words.
His laughter spills.

*

Spring: there rises up from the earth such a blazing sweetness
it fills you, thank God, with disorder.

*

I am a performing artist; I perform admiration.
Come with me, I want my poems to say. And do the same.

 

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Reminder: One Week to Demo

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 19, 2025| 2 Comments »

After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.

–Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908)

Next Saturday you can be the one to take a little break and watch some other fellows busy at work.

I am busy this morning but wanted to remind everyone that I will be doing a painting demonstration at the West End Gallery on Saturday, April 26. My demo begins at 10 AM and runs to about 12 noon. Maybe a little later than that depending on how the painting I will be working on is progressing.

As I mentioned earlier, I seldom paint in front of people and fewer people than you might think have actually seen me at work. Being self-taught with a process that is constantly shifting in one way or another makes me both self-conscious and a little protective of my process. But I thought this might the time to break out of that pattern and give folks a glimpse.

Depending on how it goes, it might be the only opportunity you’ll get! But I am determined to make it work out okay so I think it will be a bit of fun. Hope you can stop out next Saturday.

There’s a reason I mentioned being self-conscious about doing this. There will be two other extraordinary painters showing off their talents at the same time. The marvelous Gina Pfleegor will also be giving a demo beginning at 10 AM while painter extraordinaire Trish Coonrod will also be starting her demonstration beginning at 11 AM. It’s intimidating for me but for you it’sa great opportunity to see three painters with distinct styles working in one space at the same time.

And to sweeten the deal, later in the day the talented Judy Soprano will be giving a demonstration of her highly skilled watercolor technique, beginning at 2 PM.

There will be a lot going on at the West End Gallery next Saturday so put it on your calendar. Like I said, take a little break from your own work and come out to watch some other folks working hard.

I wanted to share a song about work here. I was contemplating the old Johnny Paycheck song, Take This Job and Shove It, but felt that was little too pessimistic. I like my job, after all. So, I am going with a song that isn’t specifically about working but is way more upbeat. This is Workout, from an Ed Sullivan Show appearance by the great Jackie Wilson. It kind of makes sense since I look at every painting session as a kind of a workout, a flexing oof those painting muscles.

Just don’t expect that kind of dancing next week, okay?

Go to go now– I have a painting workout waiting for me. Hope to see you next Saturday at the West End Gallery!

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