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Posts Tagged ‘Chuck Palahniuk’

Archaeology: The Now and Then

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 10, 2026| 4 Comments »

Detail from Archaeology: The Now and Then — Now at Principle Gallery

Of all the priceless objects left behind, this is what we rescue. These artifacts. Memory cues. Useless souvenirs. Nothing you could auction. The scars left from happiness.

–Chuck Palahniuk, Diary (2003)

Archaeology: The Now and Then – Now at Principle Gallery

This short passage from a Chuck Palahniuk novel spoke loudly to me this morning when I was examining the artifact field of the new Archaeology painting, Archaeology: The Now and Then, that is part of my solo exhibit opening on Friday at the Principle Gallery.

I sometimes crop out the landscape sections of my Archaeology pieces, leaving only the artifact field such as I have done in the image above. It allows me to examine these groupings of artifacts, allowing me to see if it has its own rhythm or wholeness outside the context of its position in the painting. More often than not, I am pleased by the results.

I usually find myself vowing to do several large paintings that would consist of only artifact fields such as the one above, devoid of the landscape or soil strata that is normally shown in these paintings. Maybe I will do that sometime soon. You never know, right?

I was greatly pleased by the image above, both as itself and in the painting. It felt playful and somewhat mournful at the same time. It reminded me of the passage from Palahniuk. These were ultimately memory cues and useless souvenirs. Nothing priceless or valuable in a general sense.

The scars left from happiness.

The remains of a life once lived. Gone are the memories attached to these simple objects, as well as the inside jokes and knowing glances they once inspired. Objects that held meaning and utility when viewed in the context of a life but now are little more than a random trash heap.

These paintings always make me wonder if these artifacts are the scars of my own happiness. I guess they must be. On one hand, that makes me a bit sad. Seeing the remnants of one’s life spread through a landfill has that effect.

But looking at the detailed section at the top, I find myself fairly happy. Maybe even joyful.

And in my mind, that makes sense.  These are, after all, scars left from happiness. Every scar is tangible evidence of our experience in this life, each bearing our story and memory.

What’s not be happy about?

If my life is some day in the future reduced to this buried field of artifacts and scars, I am okay with that.

I smile at the possibility of an archaeologist a millennium or two in the future trying to piece together a narrative from the debris I leave behind.

As the late Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska said in her poem Archaeology:

Show me your whatever
and I’ll tell you who you were.

Well, this is my whatever, I guess. Good luck to those future archaeologists. I hope they make me look better than I am.

If that is the case, I am sure whatever bit of cosmic dust that remains of me then will be grinning somewhere out there.

Archaeology: The Now and Then is 10″ by 20″ on canvas and is now hanging at the Principle Gallery for my annual solo exhibit. This year’s show, titled Flow, begins with an Opening Reception this Friday, June 12, that runs from 6-8:30 PM.

Here’s a 2003 song, Traffic in the Sky, from singer/songwriter Jack Johnson. With the lyrics below, it seems to be a good fit here.

Puzzle pieces in the ground
No one ever seems to be digging
Instead, they’re looking up towards the heavens
With their eyes on the heavens, mm
The shadows on the way to the heavens, mm
It’s enough to make me cry
But that don’t seem like it would make it feel better
The answers could be found
We could learn from digging down
But no one ever seems to be digging

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Not Perfect But a Pretty Damn Good Day

Posted in Music, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on March 2, 2021| 4 Comments »

“Trinity: Sky, Land and Man” — At the Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA

One minute was enough, Tyler said, “A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Yesterday was probably the best day I have had in the studio in some time. Easily the best this year , the one we call 2021. Things just went well all the way around. A new painting I was working on came to completion and far exceeded the expectations that I had when first beginning it.

I could feel the momentum from it and knew that it would carry me forward for awhile. And just that bit of knowledge creates its own momentum which carries over into other aspects of my life. I am not going to get into them because for the most part they are mundane and small insignificant things. Personal stuff that doesn’t make a bit of difference in anyone’s world but my own.

But it’s those little things, those little pangs of happiness and satisfaction, that make up a good day. Not every good day is made up of earthshaking events. In fact, almost none are. Big events usually have so many ramifications that their weight sometimes takes away from the joy they might otherwise bring. 

Well, that’s my take. I might be a little cynical in that respect.

But it was a good day. I would say perfect but I don’t truly believe in perfect as a state of being. At least, one that lasts for more than a singular moment on the rarest of occasions. There are just too many contributing factors in our lives that would have to come into alignment for it to occur more than once in a great while.

I do believe in pretty damn good as a descriptive term though. Even that takes hard work and perseverance. And if in getting to that, a perfect moment pops up like a purple unicorn every so often, all the better. If there are perfect moments they most likely show up on pretty damn good days.

I think the words from Chuck Palahniuk and his novel Fight Club at the top sum it up pretty well. 

So, let’s call yesterday a pretty damn good day. I am not sure there was any perfection involved in the day but then again, I was never expecting it. But its absence didn’t diminish it in any way.

Maybe it will show up today. Who knows? I think I will get to work and find out.

Hope you have a pretty damn good day. Here’s a favorite song from the late great Lou Reed. It’s called Perfect Day. Most likely that Pretty Damn Good Day just didn’t carry the same weight or simply didn’t fit the meter of the song. Doesn’t matter– it’s a pretty damn good song.

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Auction Update: One to Go!

Posted in Auction, Current Events, tagged , , , , on January 17, 2020| 5 Comments »

7:55 AM UPDATE: The third and final painting for this auction reached its set goal of $1000! Thanks to everyone for making this a great fundraiser.

Many, many thanks to everyone for making a success of the auction to benefit the rescue and rehabilitation of Australian wildlife affected by the recent wildfires there. On each of the last two days, paintings put up for auction reached their set goals, moving the amount raised closer to the $4000 mark I arbitrarily set as a goal.

Now if we can have the third and final piece sell, we’re there.

That final painting is Part of the Pattern. I have set a Buy Now price of $1000 on it, with an opening bid of $400. I knew when I chose this piece for this auction that it would be the last to go. It is a bit more personal in its view, a bit more narrow in its appeal and attuned to my own beliefs. That it speaks loudly and clearly to me doesn’t mean that it will have the same effect across the board.

While I keep telling myself that my feeling are strong enough that I should just keep it, it remains a painting that I am willing to part with, not for money for myself, but in order to do something good. I want that for this painting– that it does something good now and perhaps again later, at some future point in the life of whoever obtains it.

To that end, I am promising that if someone bids the Buy Now price of $1000, there will be a special added gift with it. I am not disclosing what this is but if you know my past, you will recognize that this is not an empty promise. My credo has always been to give a bit more than people expect. It’s a lousy way to do business but it helps me sleep at night.

So, take a look at yesterday’s post for the rules of the auction and bid. You’ll be getting a painting that I think is special along with an added gift but more than that, your bid will provide a lot of help for creatures that are trapped in the midst of a true environmental tragedy.

Thanks for helping out.

Here’s a post I wrote about Part of the Pattern several years back that better explains how I see it:

+++++++++++++

GC Myers- Part of the Pattern

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

–Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

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I tend to agree with the snippet above from Chuck Palahniuk’s book.

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

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

 Just speculating there, of course.

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

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

“Part of the Pattern” in the Studio

 

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Part of the Pattern

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on May 6, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Part of the Pattern

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

–Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

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

I tend to agree with the snippet above from Chuck Palahniuk’s book.

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

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

 Just speculating there, of course.

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

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

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