Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Dark Work’

Gershom

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Music, Quote, tagged , , , , , , , on March 20, 2021| 2 Comments »

And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

–Exodus 2:22

I was looking at the piece above early this morning. It’s been with me for a long time and I sometimes take it for granted and don’t take the time to engage with it. But this morning I looked at it longer than I had in some time, reconnecting with what it has meant to me. Maybe it was because it’s near that time of the year when I get to indulge a guilty pleasure with my annual viewing of The Ten Commandments, the campy biblical epic from Cecil B. DeMille that always runs on ABC during the week before Easter. Or maybe it’s that the pronunciation of the Hebrew word ger which means stranger sounds the same as the shortened version of my name that my family often used for me growing. I don’t really know but thought that it would be appropriate to share a post about it that has ran a couple of times during the many years this blog has been around.

I have been writing recently about some of the orphans, those paintings that make the rounds of the galleries and finally come back to me. The piece above is one of these orphans but it really isn’t. It’s mine alone, one of the rare pieces that I don’t think I would ever give up. Like many parents when looking at their children, I see much of myself in this painting.

Over the years I have periodically written about a group of paintings that were considered my Dark Work that were painted in the year or so after 9/11. The piece shown above is one of these paintings, painted sometime in early 2002. I very seldom consider a painting being for myself only but this one has always felt, from the very minute it was completed, as though it should stay with me.

It is titled  Stranger (In a Strange Land) which is derived from the title of Robert Heinlein’s famous sci-fi novel which in turn was derived from the words of Moses in Exodus 2:22, shown here at the top. The name Gershom is derived from the Hebrew words ger which means stranger or temporary resident and sham which means there. Together Gershom means a stranger there. It is defined now as either exile or sojourner.

The landscape in this piece has an eerie, alien feel to it under that ominous sky. When I look at it I am instantly reminded of the feeling of that sense of not belonging that I have often felt throughout my life, as though I was that stranger in that strange land. The rolling field rows in the foreground remind me just a bit of the Levite cloth that adorned Moses when he was discovered in the Nile as an infant, a symbol of origin and heritage that acts as a comforting element here, almost like a swaddling blanket for the stranger as he views the landscape before him.

As I said, it is one of those rare pieces that I feel is for me alone, that has only personal meaning, even though I am sure there are others who will recognize that same feeling in this. For me  this painting symbolizes so much that feeling of alienation that I have experienced for much of my life, that same feeling from which my other more optimistic and hopeful work sprung as a reaction to it. Perhaps this is where I saw myself as being and the more hopeful work was where I aspired to be.

Anyway, that’s enough for my five-cent psychology  lesson for today.  In short, this is a piece that I see as elemental to who I am and where I am going. This one stays put.

Here’s a little of the great (and I think underappreciated) Leon Russell from way back in 1971 singing, appropriately,  Stranger in a Stranger Land…

Read Full Post »

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, tagged , , , , , on April 21, 2020| 2 Comments »

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

Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it’s time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

–Who Knows Where the Time Goes, Sandy Denny

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

Kind of a convergence of things today. I was looking at some work form 2002, from the period after 9/11. My work at that time went primarily from transparent bright colors painted on a white ground to deeper saturated colors painted on a black ground, which became known as my Dark Work. There was a group of paintings in this series that featured interior scenes with with windows and an occasional open door along with a single red chair.

While these pieces were still being shown in galleries, I began hoarding them a bit, wanting to hold on to them. It felt like there was something personal in them that I didn’t want to share. at that time. Too close to the bone. I have several of these paintings and they are among the untouchables, those pieces that aren’t for sale.

The feeling in them had rhythm and feel that spoke to the bleaker days of this current isolation– a mix of sadness, resignation and longing. A lot of introspection and stillness in them.

At the same time, a friend sent me an email asking if I had heard of a singer named Eva Cassidy. I had heard her name and knew a little about her from years before but hadn’t found the time to listen to her work. She was a gifted singer/songwriter who, while well known in the DC area, never achieved wider recognition before succumbing to melanoma at the tender age of 33 in 1996. After her death, her work took off in the UK and the rest of Europe. Her recording released after her death have sold over ten million copies and have went to the top of the British charts 3 times.

Her music, or rather her voice, often has that same mixture of sadness, resignation, longing and stillness that I see in this group of paintings.

I am playing one of her recordings today, a cover of a Sandy Denny song called Who Knows Where the Time Goes? There is a bit of a convergence in her having recorded this song. Sandy Denny, for those of you who don’t know the name, was a tremendously talented British singer/songwriter, who is hailed as being “the pre-eminent British folk rock singer.” She fronted Fairport Convention for a while, alongside Richard Thompson, and was the only guest singer to ever appear on a Led Zeppelin recording, The Battle of Evermore. 

But she had bouts of depression along with alcohol and drug issues that often caused her physical injury. In late March of 1978, she suffered a fall where she banged her head on concrete. Soon after, she began to experience severe headaches. On April 1, she made her last public appearance with Who Knows Where the Time Goes? being the last song she ever sang in public.

She died on April 21, 1978 from a brain hemorrhage at the age of 31.

Like Eva Cassidy, her renown only grew after her death, with multiple posthumous releases of her work.

Two tragic lives that ended at much too early an age, bonded by this song. Both do haunting versions of it. I think I will listen to it again while I look at the painting at the top.

Have a good day and be thankful for the life that you have.

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Sleepwalk

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Quote, tagged , , on January 8, 2019| 2 Comments »

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

My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‘light’ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

–Charles Bukowski

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

This is a painting, Sleepwalk, from back in 2002. It is part of what I call my Dark Work which was when I first began working on a black painted surface. The idea was to make the blackness part of the painting, to give the painting the darkness against which I could set the contrast of the light.

Like the poet Charles Bukowski says above, I felt that in order to be honest as an artist I had to incorporate my own darkness in my work. Utilizing the darkness kept the perceived optimism of the work from wandering into the territory of cockeyed Pollyanna-ism. It provided contrast in the form of a sense of reality, a basis for validating the optimism of the light and the color.

Light needs dark, plain and simple.

The Dark Work was very important for me and I continue to paint using the same process and techniques I developed in that time. This particular piece has lived with me for many years now and I love pulling it out to study it from time to time. There always seems to be something new to focus on. A brushstroke. A section of the texture. The transition of one color into another.

It provides lessons that memory has long forgotten as I continue my own sleepwalk through this life.

Read Full Post »

Night Blossom

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Motivation, Painting, tagged , , , on February 2, 2018| 2 Comments »

I was recently going through some old work and came across some paintings from 2002 that had slipped my mind. There were several done in the same style as the piece shown here, Night Blossom, with chunky, mosaic-like skies in deep blues and greens.  They had a dark, moody tone and a sense of weight in them that really drew me to them when I pulled them up on my screen.

It made me wonder why it was a path that I didn’t follow a bit further at that time. Maybe I felt it was too reminiscent of stained-glass. It does have that feel in the way it goes together.

Or maybe I just was headed in another direction that had a little more pull on me at the time. I was in the midst of my Dark Work in the aftermath of 9/11 which took me directly into my Red Roof series so perhaps that is the main reason for not doing more in this vein.

So, it may be as simple as it turning out to be that there is not enough time in the day to follow up on all the flares that are sent off in one’s head sometimes. Who knew?

But seeing this again and examining it closely re-ignites that flare and I see this as a new possibility in a larger scale done with skills that have evolved in the past 16 years.

And that is exciting for me.

Whether it turns outs to be what I see in my head is another thing. Sometimes those things I envision turn out much different in reality and not always in a positive manner.

We shall see…

Read Full Post »

Stranger in a Strange Land, Again

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , on November 4, 2017| 2 Comments »

GC Myers Stranger (In a Strange Land) -

 And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

–Exodus 2:22

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

I have been writing recently about some of the orphans, those paintings that make the rounds of the galleries and finally come back to me. The piece above is one of these orphans but it really isn’t. It’s mine alone, one of the rare pieces that I don’t think I would ever give up. Like many parents when looking at their children, I see much of myself in this painting.

Over the years I have periodically written about a group of paintings that were considered my Dark Work that were painted in the year or so after 9/11.   The piece shown above is one of these paintings. I very seldom consider a painting being for myself only but this one has always felt, from the very minute it was completed, as though it should stay with me.

It is titled  Stranger (In a Strange Land) which is derived from the title of Robert Heinlein’s famous sci-fi novel which in turn was derived from the words of Moses in Exodus 2:22, shown here at the top. The name Gershom is derived from the Hebrew words ger sham and means a stranger there. It is defined now as either exile or sojourner.

The landscape in this piece has an eerie, alien feel to it under that ominous sky. When I look at it I am instantly reminded of the feeling of that sense of not belonging that I have often felt throughout my life, as though I was that stranger in that strange land. The rolling field rows in the foreground remind me just a bit of the Levite cloth that adorned Moses when he was discovered in the Nile as an infant, a symbol of origin and heritage that acts as a comforting element here, almost like a swaddling blanket for the stranger as he views the landscape before him.

As I said, it is one of those rare pieces that I feel is for me alone, that has only personal meaning, even though I am sure there are others who will recognize that same feeling in this. For me  this painting symbolizes so much that feeling of alienation that I have experienced for much of my life, that same feeling from which my other more optimistic and hopeful work sprung as a reaction to it. Perhaps this is where I found myself and the more hopeful work was where I aspired to be.

Anyway, that’s enough for my five-cent psychology  lesson for today.  In short, this is a piece that I see as elemental to who I am and where I am going.  This one stays put .

Here’s a little of the great (and I think underappreciated) Leon Russell from way back in 1971 singing, appropriately,  Stranger in a Stranger Land…

This is a repost of an entry from back in 2013 that has been heavily edited. 

Read Full Post »

The Dark Work/Redux

Posted in Current Events, Early Paintings, tagged , , on November 29, 2016| 1 Comment »

I wasn’t planning on featuring another older blog post.   But in recent days I have realized that some of the struggles I am going through in the studio are very similar to those I experienced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in late 2001 and through 2002.  My reaction to those attacks and the the current state of the country has been very similar.  

But there are differences between now and then.  How these will come out in the work is still to be seen.  It seemed in 2001 our angst was a matter of simple light and dark.  Right and wrong.  But the situation now is much different.  It is almost Kafkaesque in its absurdity.  Truth has become a matter of perception and belief rather than factual evidence.  We are no longer facing a darkness from some outside force.  

Instead we find ourselves in a tangle of lies, disinformation and misinformation.  Deeply divided visions for our future.  A giant Gordian knot of our own darkness.  And like the Gordian knot, the solution to undoing this tangle may come from an unlikely person or source.  A unique strategy that involves thinking outside of the box.  Or the stroke of a sword.

While I have yet to act on this impulse, I am seeing my coming work,  much like I did in 2001, in darker tones.  Deeper shadows.  And like that earlier “dark work” the focus and strength of the work will not be found in the oppressive nature of the darkness.  No, it’s strength will hopefully arise from the hope found in the light that will be there.

And there will be light.

This is from back in 2008:  

____________________

A Journey BeginsMy work had a dramatic change for a while in the months after 9/11.  Like everyone, my worldview shifted that day and this was reflected in my work.   It became darker in appearance and tone,  a bit more ominous in feel.   A lot of this had to do, technically, with the way the pieces were painted.  I was using a dark base and adding color in layers on top of this base, slowly building up my surface.  Much like painting on black velvet.  Normally I start with a white base and add layers of colors, taking away color as needed to achieve a desire effect.  As I pulled paint off the surface, the light base would come through and give the picture plane a glowing presence.  My normal technique is basically a “reductive” style whereas this new work in 2002 was “additive”.

Being untrained, these are terms I’ve adopted to sort of describe what I see as my technique.  They work for me.

Night TranceThis new work was not nearly so optimistic in feeling as my previous work.  People were a bit slower to embrace it and I wasn’t surprised at a time when our nation was still reeling.  But it was a true expression of how I felt at that time and I remember my time at the easel with these pieces as being very trance-like.  I would start a piece and have a hard time stopping. A virtual intoxication of color.  Or maybe more of a refuge in the scenes.  I don’t know.

Since the public was a bit more lukewarm to this group , which the galleries call “the dark work”, I have several of these pieces still and I am still both excited and calmed when I look at them.  They are rich and bold and very still in nature.  They may be dark but I still think there is hope in these paintings but it’s a wary type of hope.

And in the end, hope is hope…

In the Flow

Read Full Post »

October Sky

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on October 3, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- October SkyThis is a new painting that I have been working on recently.  It’s a 24″ by 24″ canvas that has a working title of October Sky.  It has nothing to do with the movie of that title — the one about how Homer Hickam, the son of a West Virginia coal miner. overcame long odds to become a rocket scientist.  I’m not fully sure of the reason for the title except that during the time I was painting  this the sky was gray and rainy.  The title just seemed to emotionally fall to this piece but that might change as I live with it.

And it’s a piece that I like living with right now.

It’s darker tones and clashing, interweaving lines satisfy something in me at this time.  There’s part of me that feels that I need to bring more light into it but  I find myself wondering if that is just a remnant of my past experience with my dark work from the aftermath of 9/11  that was not as well received as my lighter and more brightly colored work of that time.  It was my first experience working on a dark base and it took time for me to develop the style I use now where I create more color and light on the surface, far more than was on those earlier pieces.

So I have become accustomed to working past stages where the darkness is still strong in my work, sometimes when I am deeply drawn tot he darker aspects of the work.

And this is one such piece.  Looking at it now, I think it might be diminished by going too much further into the light.  But that is at just this moment and might change.  This is one of those pieces that require deliberation, time to ponder the painting’s real point of existence and feeling.  Some pieces announce themselves before the last strokes are even considered and others are more ambiguous.

And it is this ambiguity that I think gives this piece its strength.  It doesn’t announce itself as one thing.

And I like that.

I’m going to continue looking at this for a while, just taking it in for what it is in the moment.

 

Read Full Post »

“Home+Land” + Gallery Talk + Prize

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Painting, tagged , , , , , , on July 27, 2015| 3 Comments »

GC Myers Destiny Bound framedThis coming Saturday, August 1, I will be giving a Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery in support of my current show, Home+Land, that is hanging there.  It starts at 1 PM and, as many of you who regularly read this blog will know, ends with a drawing where one person in attendance will take home a painting of mine.

It’s something I’ve done for several years now at my Gallery Talks  and is something that really gives me great pleasure.  I’ve always felt so fortunate to have found my current life as a painter that this allows me to express my gratitude in a tangible way.  As a result, I try to carefully choose the works that I give away, not wanting to just go the far corner of the closet where I hide those early experiments that make me grimace to look at them now.

No, I want to give away paintings where I feel a pang of loss in giving them away, want them to have some sort of meaning for me so that this is not just an empty gesture. So, for this Saturday’s drawing, I have chosen the painting shown above.  It’s called Destiny Bound and is a 16″ by 20″ canvas so it has the size to give it a real presence.  It’s a painting that was only shown publicly once for a very short time before I brought it back to the studio.  It is sort of an anomaly in my body of work in the way it is framed, using a gold-leafed plein air frame rather than my signature frame.  I tried this frame style for a handful of pieces several years ago and decided that I wanted to stay solely with the continuity of my normal frames.  This is the one painting that remains in a gold frame and I chose to keep it as I’ve just become used to seeing it that way.

So, even though it has a unique overall appearance for my work, the painting itself is what I consider a great example of what has been called my Dark Work, work that first appeared in the months after 9/11 but has evolved over the years.  I am really attracted to overall presence of this painting and the deep colors and line work as well. And the expressiveness of the tree on the right.  That tree  has always felt like it pays tribute in some way to Thomas Hart Benton with its curves and lines.  While it reminds me of some his figures or trees, off the top of my head I can’t cite a particular painting of his that might feature such a tree or figure.

But that connection and the way the tree seems animated jumps out at me whenever I look at this piece. I just plain like this painting.  And I am giving it away on Saturday.  So, stop in at the West End Gallery on Saturday for what I hope will be an entertaining talk and maybe you can take  Destiny Bound home with you.  The talk starts at 1 PM and generally lasts about an hour.  Hope to see you there.

Read Full Post »

Filling In the Gaps

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, tagged , , , , on August 16, 2014| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Peaceful Tidings sm

Peaceful Tidings- GC Myers

My show, Layers, at the West End Gallery hangs for another two weeks, until August 29th.  It has been a very good show thus far with many of the paintings having found new homes, many of them in distant locales.  In fact, more than half of those sold have left the state, including two leaving yesterday for Utah. This has created a lot of gaps in the exhibit, enough so that Jesse Gardner, the assistant director there, asked if I had some larger pieces available to fill in the gaps. 

This struck me as a nice opportunity to show a few paintings that have not been seen in a while, pieces that have been biding their time with me in the studio. Included is the piece shown to the right, Peaceful Tidings, a piece measuring about 18″ by 36″ on paper.  It is a painting that inexplicably only showed in one gallery for a short time before coming to the studio.  Why I have kept it under wraps is a question that I can’t answer.  It has always seemed to be here, always drawing my attention when I am near it.  So this seems like a nice chance to let it out once more.

A few are from the group of work that I call the Dark Work, from around 2002.  Includes in this group are two pieces shown below, Night Karma and Night Vibrations, which is a larger piece, coming in at 30″ by 34″ on paper.  This series was a departure in style and tone from the much lighter and transparent work I was doing at the time and was very reflective of the tone of the time just after 9/11. Darker and with more weight, more ponderous.

But over the years as this work has become less associated with that time and people take it in with a different perspective, viewing it for what it is expressing in the now.  As a result, there are only a handful of these pieces from that time floating around, including this small group.  This work has great meaning for me and served a great purpose in my development, allowing me to better follow the inner voice that is most true to who I am as a person.  It’s good to show these pieces, even if only for a short time.

So, if you’ve already seen the show at the West End Gallery or if you have not, there is something new for you to see before it comes down in a couple of weeks.  Hopefully, you will find it interesting.

GC Myers- Night Vibrations sm

Night Vibrations- GC Myers

GC Myers- Night Karma sm

Night Karma- GC Myers

Read Full Post »

Dark Work

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, tagged , , , , , on November 6, 2013| 5 Comments »

-GC Myers -Dark Work ca 2002I am pretty excited to include a small group of older paintings in my upcoming show, Alchemy, which opens November 16th at the Kada Gallery.  The group consists of four paintings from 2002, all painted in darker tones and without  the Red Tree that inhabits so much of my other work.  This work, which is often called my “dark work,” was painted in the months of 9/11 and reflected the state of mind of myself and most of our nation at that point, seeming less optimistic  and more foreboding in the context of the time.  To me this felt like important work, at least on a personal level, in that I knew that I was completely emotionally invested in each piece.  As much as I can say about anything I’ve painted, this was work that I felt had to be done.

This body of work sold well but there was a general cooling of the art market  in the aftermath of 9/11 which left me with several of these pieces that came back and have stayed with me in the studio for the past decade.  They have remained favorites of mine through this time, always surprising me with their solidness and presence when I pull them out.   In my opinion, they have aged well and time has washed away a bit of that time  in which they were created.  They have now taken on a much different feel for me.  I don’t get that sense of foreboding from them anymore.  If anything, there is a guarded optimism in this work, the distant glows over their horizons seeming more pronounced than I remember at the time.

While all that has changed is the context of time, I now see them as meditative and serene.  I will be interested to see how this work strikes viewers at this show.

The pieces are show individually below, the first being  Desideratum,  11″ by 15″ on paper:

GC Myers- Desideratum smThe piece below is Night Karma which is 16″ by 20″ on paper.

992-091 Night Karma smNext is Dark Cadence which is 9″ by 19″ on wood panel:

995-323 Dark Cadence sm

And finally, here is Soft Dream of Night which is 14″ by 24″ on paper.  I wrote about this piece here several weeks ago.

995-324 Soft Dream of Night sm

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »

%d bloggers like this: