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Posts Tagged ‘Early Painting’

The Sky Is…

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Process, Quote, tagged , , , , , on March 27, 2021| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- The Sky Is Always the Sky 1995 sm

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Thought I’d share another older piece, one that also never found its way out of the studio. Some times the reason they stay with me is obvious and other times not so much. This small piece falls in the not so much category.

It’s from mid 1995, not long after I first started showing my work publicly. Across the bottom of the piece of watercolor paper on which it is painted is the title The Sky Is Always the Sky along with the date it was painted in 1995.

Looking at it now, I can’t figure out why I felt it wasn’t worthy to show at that time. I am actually pretty pleased to be able to show it now. It has much in it that I wish would show up in my work now, twenty five years later.

For example, its utter simplicity and the gracefulness of its linework. Well, my definition of gracefulness, anyway. There’s also the way the layers of color go together so well with the grainy pigments of the cobalt blue settling into the shallow pits of the paper above a sepia underlayer.

Looking at it, I realize that many of the changes that took place in the following years in my work were material related. A few years after this I went from employing traditional watercolors in my work to acrylic inks. The difference is that the inks have a more and finer pigments which make their colors more explosive, more impactful. There is a difference in the more subtle aspects of the watercolors that is hard to replicate with the inks. This piece is an example, at least by my analysis.

Another difference was that I also began using a gessoed surface a few years later which also brought dramatic changes to the work. The positives of using gesso outweigh not using it for me but the beauty of cotton watercolor paper and its tactile appearance is undeniable.

The other difference was that the brushes I was using at the time were  wonderful Winsor & Newton round brushes that have long since been discontinued. These round brushes had a different brush profile than almost any other round brush I have been able to find since that time. I use a round brush almost all the time in my wet work even when a flat brush might sometimes be a more obvious choice. I like the organic quality it gives the work and the linework it produces. Brush choice has a big impact on how the work appears and I am still trying to find brushes that have the same qualities as those old W&N brushes.

Anyway, looking at this old piece again so closely gives me inspiration, makes me want to revisit those elements that make it work so well for me. We’ll see

Here’s an old Chris Isaak song, a favorite that is centered around a particular blue sky. It’s the tone I would like for this piece. Here’s Blue Spanish Sky.

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Loco Amor

Posted in Music, Neat Stuff, tagged , , , , , on March 12, 2021| 4 Comments »

I am on the run this morning. Busy. That painting that I mentioned yesterday is still cooking on the easel and calling out for more. It’s a piece that will play a part in my annual June solo show— my 22nd there— at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. More details to come.

So, I need to get other stuff done as I am in the midst of prepping for that show. Plus I am a little giddy since I get my first dose (or only dose if it turns out to be the Johnson & Johnson shot) later today. It doesn’t seem like something like a shot should raise one’s spirits but it feels like it marks the coming end of the pandemic, at least in its severest and deadliest phases.

So, I am getting right to work this morning. But I wanted to share a song to go along with the old painting from back in 2001 — that seems a lifetime ago now, so many consequential thing having occurred– that runs alongside this post. I don’t paint as many pieces in this tall, skinny format as I once did. Might have to revisit it soon. Anyway, this one feels like it goes with the song.

The song is called Loco Amor and was featured in an episode of the The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the very funny series from Amazon about a burgeoning female stand-up comedian in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. If you haven’t seen it, it has great comedic writing and a terrific cast including Alex Borstein’s hilarious portrayal of Susie Meyerson, Mrs. Maisel’s agent. 

I didn’t know anything about the song when I decided to feature it so I looked up and found out a bit about it and Pedrito Martinez, the Cuban-born musician who does the modern version featured in the show. In doing so I also discovered that the Mrs. Maisel episode used the song in a way that directly mirrored, in a shot by shot way, its use in a a 1964 Spanish language film titled Soy Cuba. That film version was performed by Los Diablos Melodicos, a Cuban rock group of that era.

Cuban rock is not well known here, understandably, but group likes Los Diablos were heavily influenced by American rock and roll of the 1950’s that was popular in Cuba before Castro and the revolution took place. Rock music was banned there in the early 1960’s, though it survived via performance. The ban was eventually lifted but there was always a close watch on the lyrics and message of the music.

I am sharing both the modern version below from Pedrito Martinez and the original as it was performed in Soy Cuba by Los Diablos Melodicos.

Now, to work I go.

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Surrender to the Now

Posted in Biographical, Philosophy, Quote, tagged , , , on December 13, 2019| 1 Comment »

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“Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.
Let it teach you Being.
Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.
Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.”

― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

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I have need of a little serenity this morning. It’s a crazy world out there and sometimes, when I let down my guard and let my reactions to it rule my demeanor, it gets the best of me. I find myself looking too far into the both the past and the future, seeking the causes and effects of things. While that might seem like a wise thing to do, to seek why things go a certain way and where they may lead, it often neglects the present time, the now.

That’s where I find myself this morning. Not in the past or the future but not quite fully in the now.

I try to sap some of the meaning of the words above from Eckhart Tolle. I have long found serenity in watching the forest and its inhabitants that surround the studio. There is a beauty in the witnessing the lives of the creatures of the wood.

For instance, take the common white tail deer that lives in abundance in our woods.

Their lives seem so difficult. Their existence is a constant struggle to find food, water and a tiny bit of shelter from the elements and the predators that hunt them. I used to have a doe that would snuggle up at night between the shrubs in front of my studio, laying up against the wall of the building. It was as safe and dry a place as she could possibly find.

There are few breaks for them. They are always on high alert, always skittishly scanning for danger and bolting in bursts of leaps through the forest at the slightest wrong movement.

Yes, it is a hard life.

Yet to see them have absolute moments of joy where they play and run with wild abandon around the studio makes me envious. It’s such a pure thing, their glorious reveling in the moment. In the now.

Watching them at these moments is one of the few times when I myself feel in the now. Their joy becomes my joy in that moment and the bitter world that surrounds us is gone away, if only for that brief instant. Gone are the worries of living and dying, of hardships past and to come.

Just a small yet absolute moment of joy.

That might be as close to real serenity that I ever experience. It might seem like a small thing but it feels like an immense treasure in a world that seems ready to plunge into madness.

And that’s just what I need. It’s good enough on this morning.

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The Search

Posted in Early Paintings, Quote, tagged , , , on October 7, 2019| Leave a Comment »

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Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

—Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time

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I am forcing myself to write about something removed from the news, lest my anger . There are things happening, both here and in our foreign policy decisions, that are deeply disturbing with ramifications that will echo for years to come around the globe. I will just let the words above from Lillian Hellman‘s autobiographical memoir, Scoundrel Time, sum up my view of the whole thing.

We are definitely in a time of scoundrels.

So, instead, I am making an unusual request.

The painting at the top, Exiles: Blue Guitar, is one that I painted back in 1995 as part of my Exiles series. This is one of the paintings I most regret letting go. It was the largest painting and the true centerpiece of the Exiles series besides having a lot of personal meaning for me.

Regrettably, this painting went to the Kada Gallery in Erie in 1997 or 98 where it was sold to an unnamed collector.

I am not trying to get it back, though I would gladly repurchase it. My desire is to get an image of it as it is now. You see, in 1997 I believe it was, I darkened the background in the painting. Any documentation of that change is lost and I have no idea or image of its final appearance. I would love to get an image and perhaps reframe the painting for its current owner. It was framed at a time before that in which I started using my signature frame. It is in an unusual frame, one that I think is probably inappropriate for it, along with a plexiglass covering that only used once or twice early on in my career. It deserves to be seen in a better setting.

My request is to any of my readers in the Erie area. Or any of my readers anywhere, for that matter. If you know of this painting or know anyone who might have my work but you’re not sure, ask them to get in touch with me here. I would like to hear from them.

I know it’s a long shot but I thought it was worth putting out there. This has been on my mind for many years now and I would like to take care of this.

Thanks!

 

 

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Not Quite

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Painting, Poetry, tagged , , on March 8, 2019| 3 Comments »

She turned to the sunlight

    And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbor:

    “Winter is dead.”

 

― A.A. Milne,

    When We Were Very Young

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It’s just another reminder of who’s in charge from Mother Nature this morning as the temps here again sit at zero. There’s bright sunshine out there with the angle of the light making your mind believe that Spring is at hand and that, like the words of A.A. Milne in the bit of verse above, Winter is dead.

Stepping out into it, you realize that it was just another cruel trick. The air is sharp like a fresh razor blade. More so because your mind was telling you it would be warmly caressing your skin instead of biting at it.

Well played, Mother Nature. You got me again.

But Spring is coming and the seemingly endless wait will make the arrival of green grass and the first peeks of bulbs breaking the ground all the more special. The beauty of contrast.

The painting above is an old piece from about 1994 or 1995. It was among a small group painted at that time that was meant to have an object serve as a pole bisecting the picture plane with the light seeming emanating from it. Kind of in a Georgia O’Keeffe manner. I did a few of these pieces with imagined flowers or tree trunks.

Don’t know why I didn’t continue following this path because I am generally very pleased with them when I come across them. They have the sense of completeness and color interest that I still seek in my work. But at that point, every day of painting brought so many new discoveries and ideas that it was sometimes hard to decide which way to turn next. I had so many sparks being generated in my head that it would not have been possible to follow them all.

That changes over time, of course. New discoveries are fewer and farther apart. Sparks still come, many with the same intensity, but they create a low banked fire now instead of the roaring blaze that it seemed like when everything was new.

When everything was new…

And that brings us back to Spring. Maybe that’s the attraction, trying to tie one’s own personal renewal to that of the Earth. If so, I will be green again soon.

And that is a good thing.

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Don’t Give Up

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Music, Painting, Poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on March 4, 2018| 2 Comments »

Woke up late this morning, at least by my standards. I bolted awake directly coming out one of those weird dreams that seem like something out of a dystopian novel like 1984 or Brave New World.

Or taken from any recent newspaper.

I wanted to go back to sleep just to try again, maybe come out this sleep with something better. Second times a charm, you know.

But I couldn’t so I headed over to the studio for my morning rituals. But that feeling from my dreams lingered, like a foreboding prophetic omen that is always at the edge of my thoughts and my vision.

I have a floater in my right eye that sometimes, when I am looking straight ahead, will dart across the far right periphery of my field of vision. It’s been there a while now but I often still finding myself jerking my head reflexively to see what is there. Of course, there is never anything there yet its continued presence gives me an unsettling feeling as though something could be there when I look the next time.

Uncomfortable dream or terrible omen? I’m rooting for uncomfortable dream but who knows what our subconscious is up to these days.  So much of the info, the indicators, the patterns it selects to process from the outside world enter without our knowledge.

It all reminds me of the image at the top, a painting from back in 1996 or thereabouts. I can’t locate a slide of this piece but came across an old photocopy yesterday and was really taken with it. It’s called Strange Victory II designed as a kind of companion to Strange Victory which was an early painting that I showed here and was based on a favorite poem of mine with that title from Sara Teasdale.

There is a lot that I like in this painting– the subtlety of the colors, the textures and the contrast of the figure and the tree against the backdrop. It is so simply constructed but has a fullness that is often elusive to me as an artist.

I think it’s a great companion piece for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. This week I chose Don’t Give Up, the Peter Gabriel song from back in the 1980’s. This version is from Willie Nelson accompanied by Sinead O’Connor, from his 1996 album, Across the Borderline. I think it’s a first rate cover of the song and I can envision the image of this painting when I listen to it.

Take a listen and have good day and better dreams.

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Guenther Hears the Boogaloo Softly/ Replay

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , on May 1, 2017| 3 Comments »

I thought I’d replay this post from back in 2011 about a little piece that is one of my personal favorites.

I came across this little piece that I had painted long ago, before I ever showed my work to anyone.  It’s a tiny little thing, barely 2″ by 3″ in size, but it’s a painting that I consider one of my favorites.  It’s not because of anything in the painting itself, although I do like the way it works visually with its simple forms and tones.  Actually, it’s because I see an entire narrative in this piece and it always comes back as soon as I see it, even after many years.

I call this Guenther Hears the Boogaloo Softly.  The story I see here is a German soldier on patrol in the second World War, in a wintry forest,  perhaps in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge.  He is separated from his group and as he is alone in the forest he suddenly hears a sound from deep in the woods, echoing softly through the frozen trees.  It is a piano and it is like nothing he has heard before.  It has a loping bassline that churns and pops and over it is a tap dance of notes that bounce and roll on the rhythm.  It’s American boogie woogie.  Somewhere unseen in the forest a piano is rolling out that boogie woogie beat.

Guenther is transfixed and holds his breath to better hear the music that enchants him. A siren’s song.  He loses all thought of his mission and his duty.  He is engrossed by the music.

I don’t go any further with this scenario in my mind.  There are obvious directions the story could take.  Guenther might allow the music to transfix him to the point he doesn’t hear the American patrol coming upon him.  Or he might throw down his weapon and flee.  But most likely, he would return to his patrol and  if he were lucky enough to survive the war, the memory of that music would haunt him for years, sending him on a search to recapture the sound of that moment in the forest.

I see it simply as a being about the transformative power of music and art, about how they unify humans despite our differences.  When we hear or see something, we don’t do so as a German or an American, as a democrat or a republican, as a Christian or a Muslim.  We react as a human to our individual perceptions.  Sometimes we cannot shake these other labels we carry with us but there are moments when our reaction is pure.  Which is what I see in this little bit of paint and paper, in Guenther’s reaction to the piano.

Such a little bit of paint yet such a lot to say…

Afternote: There is a certain irony that the boogie woogie sound is largely kept alive by Europeans now with people such as Axel Zwingenberger and Silvan Zingg, a  pianist known as the Ambassador of Boogie Woogie  who hosts a boogie woogie festival in his native Switzerland each year. But here’s a little taste of boogie woogie from the late pianist Dorothy Donegan (1922-1998) as she performs Hallelujah Boogie Woogie. In her 70’s, she’s having a good time and putting on a real show.

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Deacon Blues

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , on March 5, 2017| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- The Deacon's New Tie 1995I was thinking about what song to use for this week’s Sunday morning musical interlude and the song I chose brought to mind an old painting of mine, one that lives with me still. It from the early Exiles series from around 1995 and is called The Deacon’s New Tie.

Finished near the end of the series, it is a bit lighter and more whimsical than the other pieces in the earlier post. Outside of going out for an exhibit many years ago, the Deacon has been a constant companion here in the studio.

There’s really no back story to the Deacon. He sort of just emerged from the surface. I had no preconception of what he would be when I started. I remember clearly starting this piece on a blank sheet and making a nose. Slowly, the face formed and when his eyes with their hangdog look came around I knew he was different than my other Exiles characters.

The funny thing about the Deacon is that several months after the piece was done and include in the Exiles show, I came across an article in the newspaper about a 95 year-old man in central Florida who had won a case where he was trying to be forced from the land on which he had lived for nearly 70 years. There was a picture of a bald old man sitting on his veranda, a slight smile on his lips. There was something slightly familiar in that face, something that caused me take a second look. There it was: he was the spitting image of my deacon.

Then, reading the article, it stated that he was a longtime member of a local church and was known to friends and neighbors as the Deacon. Coincidence or maybe just a certain look reserved for those Deacon-like characters.

As you may have already surmised from the title, this week’s song is Deacon Blues from Steely Dan, a group that I often think people have let slip away in the collective memory.  I was a fan and know that I often forget them until I stumble across their music by chance.  Luckily, there’s a local restaurant where we’ve dined for many years and we can’t remember a single visit where a Steely Dan song hasn’t played on their sound system at some point during the meal. The owner must be a Steely Dan fan but I think many people would be surprised at the huge success, both critical and commercial, that this band achieved in the 1970’s.  Solid then and now.

Anyway, this is one of their hits from back in 1977, Deacon Blues. Give a listen and have great Sunday.

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Is It There?/ A Replay

Posted in Biographical, tagged , on December 16, 2016| 5 Comments »

I am at a low ebb right now in my energy, a bit tired and unfocused with some extraneous things pulling my attention away from the work that keeps me on an even keel.  It’s not an unusual feeling for this time of the year for me.  It just seems more pronounced, more worrying, this year.  But, as in the past, I take some measure of comfort in knowing that I am always only one short moment from putting all that behind me.

An acceptable uncertainty. It’s the nature of what I do.

Sometimes when I am trying to break out of this cycle of funk, I look back and today I came across a blog entry from around this time a few years back.  It features a small, very early painting that may mean more to me than anything I have yet painted.  I see this modest little piece now as a sort of roadmap that set my course those many years ago.  I thought this might be a good day to rerun that post.

GC Myers- First View 1994It’s that time of the year when I get to take a deep breath and begin to look forward into the next year, trying to determine where my path will lead next. It’s never an easy time doing this, trying to see change of some sort in the work  especially after so many years of being what I am and painting as I do. It always comes down to the same question:

What do I want to see in my paintings?

That seems like a simple question.  I think that any degree of success I may have achieved is due to my ability to do just that, to paint work that I want to see myself, work that excites me first. So I have been doing just that for most of my career, painting pictures in colors and forms that I want, or shall I say, need to see. But there is another layer to the question:

What am I am not seeing in my work that I would like to see?

That’s a harder question. How can you quantify that thing that you don’t know, might not even have imagined yet?

It might be a case of  knowing it when you see it. I know that my first real breakthrough was like that.

I was a beginning painter simply fumbling along.  Even then I knew I would never be a great craftsman following in the long tradition of fine art painters and I had little interest in showing the world or people in any sort of exactitude.  I saw it then and now as way of painting the unseen.  But I wasn’t able to visualize in any way what that unseen might be at that point.  I found myself looking for something that nagged at the edge of my mind, something that called out to me from just out of reach. I wasn’t sure what it would look like, had not a concrete idea of what it might be. It was just there in a gaseous form that I couldn’t quite grasp.

But when that thing finally stepped forward into view on my painting table and revealed itself in a tangible form– which is the painting at the top here, First View, from 1994– I instantly knew what it was that I had stumbled on and that it was something that  very important to me.

It might not look like much to the casual viewer now but in an instant I could see in this little painting the completeness of what I had been sensing in that gaseous, hazy form that hovered at the edges of my mind. I could see a full realization of all of the potential in it, in the present and shooting forward into the future like a strong beam of light. Even now, after years of evolving from it, I can see how it connects to everything in my work, even those things I had could not yet see when I painted it.

And that’s where I find myself at the moment.  There’s something out there ( or in there, I probably should say) that I want to see, might even need to see.  But I don’t know what it is yet. But I will know it when I see it.

And, trust me, I do plan on seeing it.

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The Writing’s on the Wall

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, tagged , , , on August 20, 2016| 10 Comments »

GC Myers-The Writing's on the Wall smI chose the image above from the Exiles series for this post because it just seemed to fit so well.  They were painted in pure emotion so whenever I am dealing with hard emotional things, I tend to go to this group of paintings for some reflection.

There has been a lapse in the blog this past week, as regular readers may have noticed.  It’s been a very, very tough week.

Now I’ve had a number of really bad days in my life.  A few bad weeks.  One or two very bad months and I even think there was one entire year that was fairly rotten from start to finish.  All were basically the result of my own bad decisions or perceptions.  Self-inflicted, you could say.

This was not self-inflicted.  I wish it were.  It would be easier to find blame for it within myself.  That I can do.

No, there is nobody to blame as we’ve been dealing with our father’s declining condition due to his Alzheimer’s. It culminated this past week with my siblings and I heading to Florida to retrieve my father after his longtime partner and caregiver broke her hip, making it unlikely that she will ever be able to provide care for him again. Caring for him was already too much for an 82 year old with health problems of her own living in an area where neither of them had family to fall back on.

It had been a couple of years since I had seen him.  The weekly few minutes on the phone had been reduced to a simple script that he followed that was all about the weather, his physical health (which was always “okay”) and  asking if I had spoke with my sister or my aunt.  Most other subjects were avoided or made short work of when they were brought up.  It always ended abruptly with a “If you get any real news give me a call.”  Three, four minutes, at the very most.

So our first day with him there was a shock seeing him in a very reduced state and we struggled with just what direction this could go.  It was painfully evident he needed real care that we could not provide and that we needed to bring him home to a location near us.  The trick was convincing him that this was the best thing for him.  I say convinced but it amounted to tricking him, playing with his memory deficits to get him to agree to go with us, trying to avoid getting him upset and even more confused or angry.

That sounds awful, I know, but I think those who have dealt with this disease will understand.  Myself, I didn’t have any experience dealing with this and for a day or two it was terrible doing this deception, even though it was benevolent in nature. But it had to be done and this was the only way that would accomplish it.   Even so, I found myself crying every night as I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to sleep on his couch while he slept fitfully in the room next to me.

Every day posed a new mountain to climb and each new mountain seemed taller than the one before it.  When the time came to move him, it looked like there was a series of ever increasing peaks ahead of us.  It came down to a three day road trip with my brother and I escorting him north.  It felt like three months, every moment spent trying to remind him where we going and that, no, we weren’t taking him to his Florida home.  Everything was difficult and the constant emotional strain began to take a toll in the form of a bone-tiredness and mental fatigue.

Even as we turned into the parking lot of my sister’s apartment, where he will be staying for a short time, I had to calm his agitation.  The same thing happened when I left to come home a bit later.  I’m glad that I have a calming effect on him but it takes a toll every time I have to make him look at me and listen as I tell him that I am looking out for him and that everything will be okay.  Internally, I feel like a shit and a liar because I know that it won’t be okay, that he won’t ever see his Florida home again and most likely won’t see his longtime girlfriend again.

We have even bigger peaks to scale in the days ahead and I am filled with dread.  But they must be climbed.  That’s all there is to it.  There is no choice to be made here.  Regardless of the flaws and shortcomings of this man–and there are many– we know we have a responsibility to him that we can’t discard,  There is only path through those mountains.

I probably shouldn’t be sharing this on this blog that is primarily about my work. But I have come to view my life as my work and my work as my life. They seem interconnected and inseparable.  The emotions in my life feed the emotional part in my work so this will no doubt seep into my future work. That is the one thing in this whole thing of which I am sure.

So, I’ve got to put on my gear for the day and get climbing.  There’s a mountain out there waiting…

 

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