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To Find is the Thing.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 19, 2024| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- Time Patterns 2024

Time Patterns– At West End Gallery

I can hardly understand the importance given to the word research in connection with modern painting. In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing. Nobody is interested in following a man who, with his eyes fixed on the ground, spends his life looking for the purse that fortune should put in his path. The one who finds something no matter what it might be, even if his intention were not to search for it, at least arouses our curiosity, if not our admiration.

—Pablo Picasso, “Picasso Speaks,” 1923

To find is the thing…

I often write here about searching for something with my work. It’s usually something I can’t describe in any way that helps myself or the reader. It’s just something that pulls me forward.

Well, that’s what I thought, for the most part.

Reading the passage above from Picasso recently set me thinking that perhaps it was not a search at all, at least not in the way I had portrayed it.

Perhaps I was driven onward because I had found something and felt the need to express and share it. Or perhaps to keep that feeling of discovery, that eureka! moment, alive within myself– and within others who sensed whatever I had found for themselves when they viewed the work.

I can’t say for sure. I am still wrangling with this. But it makes some sense to me. A painting begins as an exploration, a search, but as it progresses it moves toward a revelation of some sort. The search is in the process, not in the resulting work.

At least, for the artist. It may differ for the viewer. They may see it as a way toward something they need and seek. Something they may not even realize is needed or sought. Perhaps they will find that same thing in the final work that that I had found, that same thing that seems to somehow answer vague, unasked questions.

Who knows for sure? But this idea that the work in not so much a search as it is a revealing of what has been found satisfies something in me.

Maybe that what was I was looking for in the first place?

Or maybe this is all one of those dreams where everything you wonder about suddenly seems to make perfect sense and there is that momentary feeling of elation that is then suddenly and completely gone once your eyes open.

Could it be that?

I don’t know but here’s an old song from Todd Rundgren that came to mind while I was finishing up. I haven’t heard this tune in many years and Todd Rundgren is one of those artists who was very popular in the 70’s but has faded somewhat from the front of the public mind the in the decades that followed, though he still is actively recording and performing. Just on a smaller stage as the musical outlets    became narrower and more niched. This is I Saw the Light.

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Wabi Sabi/ Patina

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 16, 2024| 2 Comments »

Wabi Sabi

“The tides of time should be able to imprint the passing of the years on an object. The physical decay or natural wear and tear of the materials used does not in the least detract from the visual appeal, rather it adds to it. It is the changes of texture and colour that provide the space for the imagination to enter and become more involved with the devolution of the piece. Whereas modern design often uses inorganic materials to defy the natural ageing effects of time, wabi sabi embraces them and seeks to use this transformation as an integral part of the whole. This is not limited to the process of decay but can also be found at the moment of inception, when life is taking its first fragile steps toward becoming.”

― Andrew Juniper, Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence

The post below is from four years back. It got a bunch of hits yesterday and when I went to see what it had to say (I often forget what I’ve written) I was struck by the image at the top of the post. The whiskey-brown color just grabbed me and at the bottom of the image I noticed wear around an exposed knothole that reminded me of a wave. Maybe Hokusai’s Great Wave in wood? I began to see the image as a painting, something I had not done before. Anyway, I read the post and liked it a lot, which pleased me. I am sometimes surprised when I read something from years ago and am impressed with it, like I was reading it for the first time. As I’ve added to my own patina in the past four years, I thought this would be worth replaying.

I added a song at the bottom that is kind of about wabi sabi. It’s called The Wino and I know from Jimmy Buffett. It’s from his 1974 album, Living and Dying in 3/4 Time, long before there were Parrotheads or Margaritaville. Hard to believe I bought it about 50 years ago. This song has been a favorite of mine for that long.

The photo at the top is the floor of our garden shed. It’s a simple structure that we bought new probably 35 [ about 40 now] years ago. Over the years, the once pristine plywood floor has darkened, taking on a smooth rich patina on the parts that have not pitted or worn away from decades of comings and goings.

It’s a beautiful thing and I often find myself stopping while I’m in there, which is every day, just to take some small pleasure in looking at its worn surface. The fact that it took a long period of time and innumerable footsteps, along with the mud, snow, grass trimmings, and oil that come along for the ride, to smooth and wear down the surface adds to my appreciation. It’s not something that could be replicated easily. Oh, you could try but it would lose that organic depth that comes with time.

Just a bit of the wabi-sabi of things around us. That’s the Japanese concept of finding beauty in the imperfection and natural wear shown by things.

And I guess that applies to people, as well. I know I am fascinated in seeing how folks age, how their faces and bodies reflect the life they have lived. There is beauty in the lines on the face or the graying of one’s hair.

Of course, I am talking about other people. I don’t find any beauty at all in my wrinkles or my whitened and thinning hair. In fact, I close my eyes now when I walk past my bathroom mirror out of the fear that some old man will jump out of it at me.

Nah, that’s not true. As much as I would sometimes like to have the smooth skin and the darker, fuller head of hair of my youth, I am satisfied, even pleased, in seeing the wear and tear written on my features. I see a small scar high on my forehead and remember the wound that left it so well.

It was many years ago and I was playing with my Magpie– her name was actually Maggie Blackwater–our highly charged husky-shepherd, chasing her around our yard. As I pursued her, I went through some low hanging branches on a birch tree next to the deck I was building off the back of our home. Midway through, as I ducked my head lower to avoid the sweep of the branches, I slammed it suddenly into a deck board that I had not yet cut off. I was knocked on my back and could feel the instant throb of pain on my forehead from the blow.

Maggie was on me in an instant, licking and urging me to get up and play some more. I laid there on the ground on my back and just laughed as hard as I could while the blood trickled down my forehead. I tend to laugh at my own misfortune, especially when it is of my own doing, which is almost always the case.

Maybe there is a bit of wabi-sabi in our laughter? Maybe it comes from the recognition of our imperfections, our humanness, in those moments?

And even while I was there on the ground, that same garden shed was not far away, its floor not yet so deeply darkened or worn. It didn’t yet have the accumulated memory of its being written on its surfaces. It was newer but it certainly wasn’t as beautiful.

And maybe that’s the attraction of this concept of wabi-sabi for me, that the wear and tear that appears is evidence of our being here, that we existed in this place and in this time. It’s much the same way in which I view my work, my paintings. Evidence that I was here, that my hand made these things and in some way my voice was heard.

That I, like that garden shed and its floor, had a purpose in this world.

Appreciate and enjoy the wabi-sabi in your own life.

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To Be What You Must

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

GC Myers- An Orderly Life sm

An Orderly Life– At the West End Gallery

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

I hesitated a bit about the use of the excerpt above from a book by author Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, that I read probably thirty years ago.

It’s considered by some as McCarthy’s magnus opus and one of the greatest of American novels. My memory of it is of its powerful imagery of the relentless chaotic violence that marked the tale, which is set in the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the late 1840’s. It’s a powerful told story that has the feel of the most lurid Hieronymus Bosch painting one could imagine.

It’s a book I would like to revisit but I keep putting off, especially in the context of America at this moment in time. It might be too disheartening to see parallels from that book in a contemporary reality.

Even so, the excerpt above describes what I see as the basis for much of my work, which is the need to seek some sort of order in the chaos, mystery, and seemingly senselessness which this world presents to us on a daily basis.

It might be a fool’s errand. I’ve said that many times before. But to not seek some sense of order in the swirl of chaos, some light in the dark, is unimaginable. Unacceptable.

To seek order means that we have not ceded control over our lives and fates to superstition and fear. That we have chosen to think and reflect on those mysteries of life.

And maybe if we can somehow pull one single thread of order from that vast tapestry of mystery and chaos, we will count ourselves among the fortunate ones who live outside the realm of chaos and fear.

Just one thread…

This post ran a few years back but I thought I’d share it because it included the painting at the top, An Orderly Life, which has been at the West End Gallery for several years now. It’s one of those pieces that really resonate for me personally and every time I come across it in the gallery I feel a pang for it. It’s a mixture of wanting it back for myself– as I said, it holds personal meaning for me– and sorrow that it hasn’t spoken to anyone else in the same way. The sorrow is always more pronounced for those pieces that I feel hold something special or that really strike a chord within me. I think this piece will soon come back to me and I will accept it with that same mix of happiness and sorrow. It actually makes the piece feel more alive to me in that we humans experience that same sort of acceptance and rejection throughout our lives, often going unrecognized for whatever their special purpose might be. In a way, the painting is just living a normal life.

And that is okay.

Here’s a 2009 song from Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens. This is titled To Be What You Must.

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Greenie’s Barn/ Beginnings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Greenie's Barn circa 1994

Greenie’s Barn, 1994– Now at West End Gallery

There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and endings of things.

–Francis Bacon, Of Delays, 1625

I came across the post below from a couple of years back this morning and thought I would use it to accompany the painting shown above. It’s a small watercolor from 1994 called Greenie’s Barn. It represents for me a beginning as it was painted in that period where I was discovering an artistic voice, at a point coming after what I feel was the major breakthrough in my development. Everything was fresh and exciting, with new discoveries coming with every session of painting. I look at this painting and that jumps out at me because I can remember how thrilled with what I was seeing in this small piece at the time. I loved it the colors at its edges, the ragged nature of its form, its quietude and contrast of light and dark. All things I desired in my work. It felt like it was signaling a direction for me to follow, as though it were a weathervane on that barn.

The barn itself reminded me of the old barns in this area. Many that I knew as a youth have long fallen to the ground from neglect as the farmers who built and used them for generations died out or moved into other forms of work. I see some now, teetering and ready to fall, sections of their roofing peeled back, exposing their roofbeams, and I feel a sadness for them. They were such important structures in their time, often maintaining an almost regal presence in their landscape, and now their kingdom was gone.

So, for me, this small painting of a barn represents both beginnings and endings. I don’t know why I named it Greenie’s Barn. It just felt right at the time and I remember referring to barns by their owners’ names as a kid. It has been with me for 30 years now and I never wanted to offer it in a gallery, but I felt now was the time. It’s at the West End Gallery now as part of their holiday show.

The post below from a few years back deals with beginnings and endings as well. It ends with this week’s Sunday Morning Music selection.

I tromped up through the woods yesterday. The snow wasn’t deep and it was cold enough to freeze up some of the boggier parts of the hillside so that I could wander through. It was something I hadn’t done for some time. Too long. Even though it’s only less than a quarter mile up in the woods, it seems like a world removed from the home and studio down below, which themselves often feel far removed from the world at the end of our long driveway.

It’s quieter than down below, the trees and the terrain muffling sound. The crunch of the snow underfoot is clean and clear. It’s a good sound.

With the snow on the ground and the leaves now gone, I could see deeper into the woods. I was able to better see the individual trunks and crowns of the trees. Some were like anonymous people in a crowd scene in a film, not really standing. While I could still appreciate their individual beauty, they didn’t stop my eye.

It was the bigger trees that jumped out at me, the beech and maples and the now dying ash trees that have been ravaged by the borer beetles. It made me think how loggers must look through the woods, their eyes measuring and taking in the shape of each tree until one large tree sets off their inner alarms. It made me wonder how my great-grandfather, who at the age of 17 first set out into the Adirondack forests in 1872 leading his own crew of loggers, would look through these woods. Would he simply see the trees as a form of income or would he look upon them as companions? After all, this was man who spent much of about 60 or so years in the deep woods in all sorts of weather conditions, most of the time coming before the use of tractors and chainsaws.

It’s one of those times when you wish you had a way to spend a few minutes speaking with an ancestor.

As is always the case in nature, the forest reminds you of the beginnings and endings. The floor of the forest is littered with dead trees that have tumbled over in wetter and windier times or, in the case of the mighty ashes that have died from the damage of the beetles, rot then fall in large chunks until all that is left is the lower trunk of the tree. The remnant ash trunks are sometime twenty plus feet tall.

I am always a bit sad when seeing these dead trees who by virtue of location and environment didn’t last as long as they might have in other places. But even so, among their bony remains on the forest floor new saplings and young trees abound, all straining upward trying to push their faces to the light.

It’s a reminder of the inborn desire to struggle and survive that is present in all species. We all desire to exist, to feel our faces in the sunlight of this world. But, as the forest points out, we all have beginnings and endings.

And that’s as it should be. How would we be able to appreciate this world, to see it as the gift it is, if we knew our time here was without end?

I don’t know the purpose of this essay. I simply started and this is what it ended up as. A beginning and an ending…

Here’s a song that is about beginnings. Not a holiday song. You most likely will get your fill of those everywhere else. Not to say I won’t play one or two in coming days but today let’s go with From the Beginning from Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

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Topsy Turvy World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 4, 2024| 3 Comments »

Brueghel_the_Elder_-_Netherlandish Proverbs

Pieter Bruegel the Elder- Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559

I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coats
With scarves of red tied ’round their throats
To keep their little heads from falling in the snow
And I turned ’round and there you go
And Michael, you would fall and turn the white snow red
As strawberries in the summertime

—White Winter Hymnal, The Fleet Foxes

I felt like hearing the song White Winter Hymnal though it is still technically not yet winter. But it is cold and there is a light covering of snow on the ground in these parts. I checked to see when I had last played it here and saw that it was in 2018 along with the post below. Since it was a favorite Bruegel painting, one that never fails to grab my attention, I decided to run it again.

I was listening to some music early this morning and came across this song, one that I hadn’t heard in a number of years. Thought it might be a good one to share if only to show the painting that adorned the album cover from which it came.

The painting is from Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1559. It has come to be known as Netherlandish Proverbs though its original title was The Blue Cloak or The Folly of the World. It has also been known as The Topsy Turvy World which I personally like.

Like any Bruegel painting, it is a pleasure for the viewer with their gorgeous warm colors and dense compositions that make it feel like there is always something more to see. The painting certainly lives up to that feeling, containing depictions of over 120 proverbs or idioms used by the Dutch at the time.

Many are comical, pointing out the absurdity of the world, and some are still in use, such as “Banging your head against a brick wall” which you can see in the bottom left-hand corner. Others have faded from usage, like “Having one’s roof tiled with tarts” which indicates that one is very wealthy. Some are surprisingly scatological, such as “He who eats fire, craps sparks,” which is about the same as our current “If you mess with fire expect to get burnt.”

If you go to the Wikipedia page for the painting there is a complete list of the proverbs along with the imagery for each. I am enjoying it as I work my way through the list. Even without the list, looking closely at a Bruegel painting is always a great pleasure, as I pointed out above.

The painting was used on the cover of the Seattle based Fleet Foxes‘ self-titled 2008 first album. The song is White Winter Hymnal which works well for this time of the season. The lyrics are actually kind of nonsensical (the verse at the top is basically the whole song) but the song with its ringing harmonies is lovely and the video is interesting. The song has also been covered by the acapella group Pentatonix.

So, take some time to really look at the painting and use the list to see if what can identify what Bruegel was saying.

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Klee/ Genesis Eternal

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 2, 2024| 2 Comments »

Ad Marginem C 1930 Painting by Paul Klee; Ad Marginem C 1930 Art Print for sale

Paul Klee– Ad Marginem, ca 1930

First, he does not attach such intense importance to natural form as do so many realist critics, because, for him, these final forms are not the real stuff of the process of natural creation. For he places more value on the powers which do the forming than on the final forms themselves.

He is, perhaps unintentionally, a philosopher, and if he does not, with the optimists, hold this world to be the best of all possible worlds, nor to be so bad that it is unfit to serve as a model, yet he says:

‘In its present shape it is not the only possible world.’

Thus he surveys with penetrating eye the finished forms which nature places before him.

The deeper he looks, the more readily he can extend his view from the present to the past, the more deeply he is impressed by the one essential image of creation itself, as Genesis, rather than by the image of nature, the finished product.

— Paul Klee, On Modern Art

This excerpt from On Modern Art, the 1924 treatise from the great Swiss artist Paul Klee.

For me, he was a big influence not only for his distinctive works but for his attitude and his views on art that he expressed so well in his writings. His use of color also influenced me. I always think of his work in terms of the color– sometimes muted yet intense and always having a melodic harmony to it.

It always feels like music to me. Like Klee, I often equate the visual with music.

I like his idea that the world is in the process of creation, of Genesis, and that it is not a final form. It allows for visionary work, for imagining other present worlds that extend beyond our perception because, as he writes, “In its present shape it is not the only possible world.”

And to me, that is an exciting proposition.

This is a reworked version of a post that originally ran in 2015. I needed a little kick of Klee this morning.

Paul_Klee,_Swiss_-_Fish_Magic_ 2

Paul Klee- Fish Magic 1925

blossoms-in-the-night-paul-klee

Paul Klee,, Blossoms in the Night

Paul Klee- Redgreen and Violets-Yellow Rhythms 1920

Paul Klee- Redgreen and Violets-Yellow Rhythms 1920

Paul Klee Bird Garden 1924

Paul Klee Bird Garden 1924

klee_southern-gardens

Southern Gardens- Paul Klee

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In Dreams/ Small Business Saturday

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

small-business-saturday 2024

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

–-John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (1989)

I ran this post last year on Small Business Saturday. It’s an echo of yesterday’s post, urging people to support local businesses, craftspeople, and artists. I thought this particular post made a reasonable case for supporting local artists and businesses as well as for people pursuing their dreams. The only change has been the song at the end. Please give a read and a listen and if you’re out and about, remember to support those businesses and artists in your area.

[From 2023]

It’s another Small Business Saturday, that Saturday after Thanksgiving when people are urged to go out into their communities and shop in locally owned small businesses. It’s one of the best ways to keep your local community vibrant and alive. The money spent for the most part stays local and multiplies many times as it radiates out into the community.

It can be a huge economic engine for the small businesspeople in your local area.

But it is also something more– it is the sustaining lifeblood for a multitude of dreams. Every local small business represents the fulfillment of a dream of someone in your area. It required that someone believed in an idea or ability that they possessed and then risked something– often everything– in putting themselves out there in front of their friends and neighbors.

It can be a gigantic gamble where failure can sometimes mean financial ruin, public humiliation, and lifelong dreams being forever crushed.

But you can look at that risk as the only chance you might get at following your dreams. A chance to finally be the person you once imagined yourself being. Even the humblest small business is the realization of a dream for someone.

And anyone’s dream is a big deal, in my opinion.

I am an artist and a small businessperson, as is every working artist and artisan. We don’t like to talk about it as a business, of course, but after the making of the art it is that thing that keeps our dreams alive. Our dreams and our livelihoods depend on people dealing with us or the local shops and galleries that carry our work– all small businesses.

Small but consequential.

Every gallery I work with provides income for at least 50-80 artists and artisans. That’s 50-80 dreams fulfilled in each gallery.

And, again, that’s a big deal.

I’ve been extremely fortunate to have my dream kept alive for the past 28 or so years. And I have those dream-enablers at the galleries that represent me as well as the many of you out there who have supported my work to thank for that. As much as I might like to think I achieved anything on my own, my dream has been dependent on so many people.

Like anyone with a dream of following their passion, it has meant the world to me. I would love to see many others achieve their own unique dreams in the same way.

So, help them out if you can. I am not asking you to buy locally as a charitable act. View it as more of an investment in your neighbors and your community and an act of humanity in that you are feeding someone’s dream. Whatever you might purchase from a small local business — be it a painting, a cup of coffee, a piece of clothing or pottery, a cupcake, or any of the many things made and sold in your area–is your first dividend on that investment. It is money well spent.

And to those of you out there with a dream who have yet to find the nerve to take the leap, I urge you to follow your dreams. Sure, it might be hard. And sure, you might fall on your face. That’s a given. But keep in mind that there is always the possibility of achieving your dream only if you take that leap.

You don’t want to be one of those people who go through life saying, “What if?” At least if you fail, you have the chance to chase another dream.

Here’s a song from the late Roy Orbison. He’s backed here by an all-star band as he performs In Dreams.

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Child of the Sun

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers -Proclaim the Day 2024

Proclaim the Day— At the West End Gallery

By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.

—Katherine Mansfield (1888- 9 January 1923)

October, 1922, Her final journal entry

About ten years back, I came across this final journal entry from the Modernist writer Katherine Mansfield, who died much too early from tuberculosis at age 35, and employed it for a painting called Proclamation. The feel of that painting very much mirrors that of the painting above, Proclaim the Day, which is at the West End Gallery as part of their Deck the Walls show which opened yesterday. The sense I get from both paintings remind me very much of the emotions expressed by Mansfield.

This is a painting that speaks to me of having come to an understanding of oneself, to be willing to stand strong against the prevailing winds in order to show that true identity. It is at once strong yet fragile, flawed yet beautiful. A strength derived from the challenges it had overcome and a fragility in that it recognizes its limits and mortality. Flawed by the scars of attained wisdom and change. Beautiful because it is honest and authentic, open to the elements and all who look upon it.

In these ways, it has become a source of light in its own right or, to use Mansfield’s term, a child of the sun.

 A child of the sun.

If only we could all see ourselves in that way.

Here’s a song I shared a couple of years back. It often comes back to me in a haunting kind of way. It’s a remake from horn player Takuya Kuroda of the 1976 song, Everybody Loves the Sunshine, from jazz artist Roy Ayers. The original is great, but I personally prefer Kuroda’s remake.  Has more of that child of the sun feel in my opinion. But, hey, that’s just me…

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The Day of Great Confusion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 8, 2024| 5 Comments »

1995-V1 The Day of Great Confusion sm

The Day of Great Confusion–1995, At West End Gallery

It was a murky confusion — here and there blotted with a color like the color of the smoke from damp fuel — of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened.

–Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

I was looking at some older work for the West End Gallery, pieces that had been with me for decades and had never been shown for a variety of reasons. Some just were never meant to be shared with the public, work not complete in one way or another. Some were drab and dull.

And some just didn’t completely click with me at the time. They didn’t hit whatever mark I had established for my work at the time they were painted. I don’t know if the criteria on which I was basing my judgement was that much different from what it is now or if it has shifted subtly over time due to time and circumstance. Whatever the reason, my appreciation for some of these unshown early pieces grew over the intervening years. 

Such is the case for the painting at the top of this page. It was painted in 1995 and, for reasons I can’t determine now, never made a journey outside my studio. Maybe it was that its colors were a bit different than my normal range of color in that time. Maybe I felt that the spew lines from where the watercolors broke free from the body of painting were too sloppy and distracting. Maybe it was the title I had jotted at the bottom of the sheet on which it was painted back in 1995, The Day of Great Confusion. Trying to determine why I applied that title always taxes my memory. 

I still don’t know why it didn’t quite hit the mark for me in 1995. 

However, looking at it at various times over the years, this painting greatly grew on me, showing me qualities I hadn’t recognized earlier. Those things I thought might have caused me to withhold now seemed like strengths. And in the past decade the title took on great significance as our country undertook an unnerving political transformation that still causes confusion and bewilderment within me.

Maybe that was the reason? I don’t know for sure, but I think there are other factors at play, as well. I think, even though it slightly differs from other pieces of that time, that it is a fine example of my early work in most every way. It’s one of those pieces that made me always pause in appreciation when coming across it in past years.

You might not see it that way and that’s okay. I just felt that if there was ever a time for a painting with that title to be shared, this was that time. It has put in its time with me and deserves to be seen.

Here’s song that kind of sums up the moment. Well, at least for me. It’s I Don’t Get It from the Cowboy Junkies. It’s from their fine 1988 album, The Trinity Session. It has bluesy vibe and lyrics that bite into the here and now.

 

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The Song of Wandering Aengus

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 30, 2024| 1 Comment »

GC Myers-- Follow the River sm

Follow the River— At Principle Gallery

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

—William Butler Yeats, The Song of Wandering Aengus

The last Wednesday before a most important election here in the US. Let’s set politics aside for the day and focus on things of beauty, of mystery, of wonder. Those things that make this life more than tolerable. Things that deepen our existence here on this spinning rock we call home.

A fine example, in my mind, is the wonderful poem above from a favorite poet, William Butler Yeats. Perhaps we’re all a bit like Wandering Aengus, silently seeking something forever elusive.

Some of us might know what we seek. Some may not.

It probably doesn’t matter so long as we continue to seek whatever it might be that tugs at our soul. I think we all need that in some form or another. Until time and times are done…

Here’s Donovan with his version of the poem in the form of a song. Lovely.

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