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Posts Tagged ‘Artist’

A Lifetime of Effort…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Art is a human product, a human secretion; it is our body that sweats the beauty of our works.

–Émile Zola, Le Moment Artistique (1868)

Calvin and Hobbes from artist Bill Watterson has long been a favorite comic strip of mine. Though the strip ended its run in 1995, it is still rerun daily in newspapers around the country. The strip above was rerun yesterday and while Calvin’s sales spiel made me chuckle, it also reminded me of a blog entry from back in early 2009. It concerns the question of how long it takes to finish a painting, a question that has been asked of me many, many times at openings and gallery talks. I usually tell the story of a commission I did for a Finnish diplomat a number of years back and how the work I did on that piece became the template or rehearsal for a larger piece soon after.

The answer that I gave in 2009 still pretty much applies although I have noticed that in recent years that it is taking me longer to finish paintings. The processes I employ in my work have evolved, sometimes gaining steps that were not in place in the earlier years. I also tend to dwell on each piece a little longer now and am more apt to set them aside so that I can simply consider them before forging ahead. But there’s even a variable in that– sometimes the energy and direction of a piece is so determined that there is a danger in losing its momentum by setting it aside.

So, there is no one answer to the question. Here’s what I wrote in 2009:

I am asked this question at every opening and gallery talk:  How long does it takes to finish a painting?

Though it’s a question that I’ve answered a thousand times, I still have to stop and think about my answer.

You see, there are so many variables in my painting technique at different times that sometimes the actual process can be much longer or shorter on any given painting. Sometimes I can toil over a piece, every bit of the process requiring time and thought. There may be much time spent just looking at the piece trying to figure out where the next line or stroke goes, trying to weigh each move. Then there are times when the painting drops out effortlessly and I’ll look up after a very short time and realize that it’s almost complete. Any more moves from me and the piece would be diminished.

I often cite an example from a number of years ago. I had been working on a series of paintings, working with a particular color and compositional form. Over the course of a month, I did several very similar paintings in several different sizes from very small up to a fairly large version. Each had a very distinct and unique appearance and feel but the technique and color were done in very much the same way.

One morning at the end of this monthlong period, I got up early and was in the studio at 5 AM. I had a very large panel, 42″ by 46″ if I am not mistaken, already prepared and pulled it out.

Immediately, I started on the panel. Every move, every decision was the result of the previous versions of this painting I had executed over the past month. I was painting solely on muscle memory and not on a conscious decision-making thought process. I was painting very fast, with total focus, and I remember it as being a total whirl. The piece always seemed near to disaster. On an edge.  But having done this for a month I trusted every move and forced through potential problems.

Suddenly, it was done. I looked over at the clock and realized it had only been two hours. I hadn’t even had breakfast yet. Surely, there must be so much more to do.

But it was done. Complete.

It was fully realized and full of feeling and great rhythm. I framed the piece and a few weeks later I took it to the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA with a number of other new pieces. This painting found a new home within hours of arriving at the gallery.

I realized at that point that every version of that painting was a separate performance, a virtual rehearsal for that particular painting.  I had choreographed every move in advance, and it was just a matter of the having that right moment when plan and performance converged.

It had taken a mere two hours, but it was really painted over the course of hundreds of hours.

And perhaps many years of painting, listening, reading, and observing before that.

I hope you can see why I always have to think about this question…

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Painting Demo/ Solo Show/West End Gallery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Work in Progress 2025

If you’re a painter, you are not alone. There’s no way to be alone. You think and you care and you’re with all the people who care. You think you care and you’re with all the people who care, including the young people who don’t know they do yet. Tomlin in his late paintings knew this, Jackson always knew it: that if you meant it enough when you did it, it will mean that much.

–Franz Kline, Evergreen Review interview, 1958

Just taking a moment to announce the dates for two upcoming events at the West End Gallery in Corning.

The first is for my annual solo exhibit at the gallery. I have normally had my solo show at the West End Gallery in July. This created a short turnaround between my annual June show at the Principle Gallery and the July show at the West End which was very stressful. It has become more and more difficult as I have aged and my processes evolve. By that, I mean it simply takes longer to complete each painting. As a result, we have moved this year’s West End Gallery show– my 24th solo effort there— to the autumn.  The 2025 exhibit will open on Friday, October 17 and run until November 13. The date for the accompanying Gallery Talk will be announced later, closer to the show opening.

The second announced date is much sooner and for something I seldom do for a variety of reasons. However, after being asked for a number of years, I will be doing a painting demonstration at the West End Gallery in a little over two weeks, on Saturday, April 26. My demo begins at 10 AM and runs to about 12 noon or thereabouts.

This event is being held in conjunction with 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. Painter extraordinaire Trish Coonrod will also be giving a demonstration at the same time. We will both be in the Upstairs Gallery so if you’re interested it serves up a nice two-fer. A chance to witness two starkly different processes.

As I said, I seldom do these demos. However, I felt that it was important, with what looks to be a challenging year for the artists and galleries, to do all I could do to support the gallery that has been my home for 30 years now.

It’s definitely out of my comfort zone and I am more than a little self-conscious about painting in front of people. I think it’s partly because, being self-taught, I don’t necessarily paint in a traditional manner. It’s not always flashy and fast. I also worry that someone will be there only when the painting is in one of the flat and unflattering stages that almost all my paintings go through.

But despite my apprehensions, I am certain it will come off well. Things usually do okay when I am this nervous.

I know it’s early in the day, but if you’re interested, please stop in at the West End Gallery on Saturday, April 26 to watch and chat for a bit. It might be fun. No kibitzing though!

Here’s a time-lapse video from 2011 that shows the stages some of my work goes through on the way to being a painting.

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Arresting Motion

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

The Resistance– At West End Gallery

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

–William Faulkner, Paris Review interview (1958)

Faulkner perfectly captures something I have been writing about here for years, the urge to leave something behind as evidence of your onetime existence in this world. It’s the driving force behind creation of all sorts, from human procreation to multiple forms of artistic expression, from the caves of Lascaux to the Sistine Chapel to the simplistic image of Kilroy left all over the world by American soldiers in WW II. Graffiti, which might be the purest form of saying I was here, has been around as long as mankind.

For the artist, it is an act of faith that your work will somehow survive into the future. You can never know with any degree of certainty. Oh, it may well make its way into museums or collections that span generations. It might well exist.

But will it be truly seen? Will it stay relevant, will its voice clearly speak in the future? Will it still maintain its movement, its life?

This idea of relevance– or rather irrelevance– is not a concern that only applies to the future for the artist. As an artist, after decades of creating work, I often question the relevance of my work at any given moment. Is it alive in this present, let alone the future?

I don’t know that you can fully know the answer to that question for anyone but yourself. Your relevance, now or a hundred years in the future, is not something you have a lot of say in.

The best you can do is to focus only on creating something that feels alive now. If it captures the motion, the feeling, the voice, and the humanity of our existence, it might well escape oblivion and might make its presence known in the future.

If it does, great. If not, you at least created something for this moment in time. And that’s great in its own right.

I chose the painting at the top, The Resistance— currently part of the West End Gallery’s Little Gems show– not only because of the obvious motion of it but because so much of what we do as humans is comprised of acts of resistance, of fighting to be heard or not relegated to some form of oblivion, one where we have no control over who and what we are.

I guess that could be applied to creating unique work, as well. Here’s a performance that I shared here several years ago. It is Ukrainian guitarist Nadia Kossinskaja performing an Asor Piazzolla composition, Oblivion. Felt like it went well this painting this morning.

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To Feel Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 4, 2024| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Time Patterns 2024

Time Patterns– At West End Gallery

The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed… because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may affect the course of events… by the way they vote, they behave, the way they think.

― Leonard Bernstein

This is not meant to be a political post and I will try to not veer into rhetoric. But, as I have pointed out in the past, everything ultimately is political in some way.

I have been thinking lately about the difference between the two presidential candidates. Not the obvious things. Those are too glaringly obvious in almost every way to go unnoticed. I don’t have to go into detail here. You see and know. Even those people who say they don’t know Kamala Harris can see the differences.

And I am not talking about gender or skin color.

The difference that sticks out for me is a little less obvious. It is something that the felonious former president*** lacks, at least in my observations. And it makes me wonder if this particular deficit is a bond between him and his most ardent followers.

What I see him lacking is a sense of art. He is a person who has obviously never felt nor been changed by art. He has seemingly never felt the communion that occurs between someone and any particular piece of art that stirs something deep within them.

For him, art is like everything else in his world–a transactional tool or commodity, something to be used to gain something tangible for himself alone. When he encounters art, it is to be used, not experienced or felt with awe or joy.

There is not art for art’s sake in his worldview.

You could see it in the years he was in office. There was no music in the White House. No celebrations of music and culture at the Kennedy Center. It was a time when the titular leader of our nation refused to honor the arts because its purpose and meaning both evaded him and failed to serve him.

It was a time devoid of art and joy for us a nation.

And that begs the question: Is that same deficit of feeling for art one of the unifying bonds between him and his most slavish followers? Have they never been changed by art, never responded to deeper feelings that art offers? Have they not seen themselves in, and been transformed by, the words, images or music of others?

And if they do lack this relationship with art, does it make them resent those who openly experience and feel art, seeing them as being somehow elite?

I don’t know that there is an adequate answer or if this is even a legitimate question. I just find myself wondering. It seems like it could be so.

But again, I don’t know.  I just feel that art, while it may not end the suffering felt by so many, expands the experience one feels of this world, creating new avenues of reality. And denying art limits our possibilities as humans. Much like the sage words at the top from Leonard Bernstein.

One guy’s opinion…

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Shadowsong

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , on October 15, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Shadowsong smWe are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

–Buddha

**********

It’s an idea that we all too often forget,  that our thoughts can form who we are.  I know for myself, the thought  that I was an artist was the most crucial step I made in becoming one.  Once I had made that decision that, yes, I was an artist, every decision  after that that contributed to me being an artist came much easier.  This was the road I was going to follow and any action that occurred would take place based on that fact.

But it took a long time to reach that point where I determined that I was indeed an artist.  In fact, for quite some time i was embarrassed to say it  when someone would ask what I did.  It just sounded too presumptuous to state it aloud even though in my mind it had become fact.  So I would say I was painter.  It sounded safer.

But inevitably, the person asking the question would determine that what I meant by painter was that I was a house painter and ask what it would cost to get their living room painted.  I guess I looked more  Sherwin Williams than Salvador Dali.  So I decided that I better just say that I was an artist.  Just less confusion and besides, that is what my mind  had already patterned itself in the shape of that word.

And, like Buddha said, joy followed.  Hopefully, it will stay with me like that shadow.

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

The painting at the top is titled Shadowsong.  It’s a new piece, 6″ by 8″ on paper,  that is headed to Erie for my November show, Alchemy,  at the Kada Gallery.  Usually when I have an image of a musician, I will follow on the blog with a video.  So, in keeping with habit, here is The Train From Kansas City by Neko Case, a favorite of mine.  Plus , it has lots of film of trains.  have a great day.

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Images of Artists

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Photography, tagged , , , , , on June 11, 2013| 2 Comments »

Artist Charles Felu Photo by J. MaesThis is sort a continuation of yesterday’s post where I was going back through images of my older work  in the aftermath of a show, something I often find necessary in order to find some balance and assurance that I am still connected to my true self .  I think the idea of connection is probably the important part here as sometimes I often feel a bit disconnected after a show, which I know sounds counter-intuitive. You would think the feeling of connection would be at its highest degree.

Besides scanning my old work, another thing I do to find connection is to go through other images as well, either of other artist’s work  or the artists themselves and their environments.  In their work I am  looking for a voice or expression in their work that is similar to my own, as though finding this common ground will somehow bind me to the greater continuum of  artists.  The same holds true for seeing artists in their studios or at work.  The common experience of creating provides a connection that makes me feel less out of the loop.

In doing so, I often come across interesting images that provoke thought and,occasionally, new directions.  For example, one image that caught my eye is the one above of Belgian painter Charles Felu, who was born without arms and painted with his feet, working in the last half of the 19th century.  Seeing this connects me to that need to express oneself, that driving  force  that has kept me pushing ahead for most of my life.  So many people have overcome  great obstacles to have their voices heard that it makes me grateful that my own obstacles are relatively small and easily overcome.

Artist Georges Braques in Paris studio 1948Sometimes, there is inspiration for new work in these photos.  For instance, when I saw this photo of Georges Braques, the Cubist innovator whose quote– There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain— was a rallying cry in my first efforts as a painter, I was taken not so much by the man or his studio but by the smaller framed piece to the left of his feet and the shield-like piece on the wall to his right.  Just a glimpse at both had my wheels instantly turning, the shapes and flow of these pieces translating into my own vocabulary. Instant inspiration.

Artist in Japan by T. Enami ca 1915-1928Another was this colorized image of a Japanese artist at work in the early part of the last century.  There is a great serenity in the space,  in his pose and even in the elegant manner in which his work tools and materials are arranged.  The beautiful cooper pot of water feels like a meditative pool here instead of merely a place to clean your brush.   It has an immediate calming effect on me, something that is often needed in the days after a show as I struggle to regain my footing.

Even as I am writing this, I am feeling the effects of these images, beginning to feel a connection once again.  I feel a bit of inspiration and calm, both greatly needed for me to create.  This is already turning into a good morning.

Got to go…

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