Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Early Work’

Studio Favorites

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, tagged , , , , , on September 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Geometry 1999

GC Myers- Geometry, 1999

I have mentioned that I will be bringing a group of older paintings from my studio with me when I head to the Principle Gallery for my Gallery Talk there tomorrow, Saturday.  These pieces will be there for only a short time and most have become favorites of mine as they have spent more time with me here in the studio.

One is a 1999 painting, shown here on the right, called Geometry.  This vintage piece that is very typical of my pre-2000 work: the Red Tree had yet to make an appearance and the composition is basically comprised of two blocks of color separated by a thin line of white.  There’s a lot that I like about this simple painting.  It has a mature quality, one of completeness, that was coming into my work at that time.  It reinforces my confidence to see that it holds up well after seventeen years.

GC Myers- In the Window: The Searcher

GC Myers- In the Window: The Searcher

Another included painting is called In the Window: The Searcher from 2005.  It is one of my favorites from the Window series which was a fairly short lived series.  The concept of my landscapes being placed in windows in the way a jewel is placed in a setting was a fun concept and exciting to work in.  It got a lot of interest from collectors at the time but it felt limited to me as a long term series, one that I would work in throughout the years.  But it remains a series that still captures my fancy and I think that this piece really exemplifies what I was trying for in it.

There are several other paintings from different years in this group, many shown below, that all have similar backgrounds.  These are all pieces that have somehow found their way back to me without finding a true home.  It’s interesting to see them in the context of the current work, to see both the consistency in the work as well as where they diverge.

 

Defiant Heart! Win this Painting!

Defiant Heart! Win this Painting!

You’ll be able to see the whole group  together tomorrow on the gallery walls along with a selection of new works.  So, I hope you’ll stop in this Saturday at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.  My Gallery Talk there will be starting at 1 PM and will feature a free drawing for the painting shown here, Defiant Heart, along with a few other goodies.  These talks are generally a lively conversation with a lot of Q & A.  It has usually been a good time in the past and I see no reason this shouldn’t be a lot of fun as well.  Hope you can make it!

GC Myers- Room to Breathe

GC Myers- Room to Breathe

GC Myers- Through Time

GC Myers- Through Time

GC Myers- Call to Waking

GC Myers- Call to Waking

GC Myers- In the Clearing

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Hello In There

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Music, tagged , , , , on September 4, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers Early Work 1994I have a square cardboard box in one of the rooms of my studio.  It’s not much to look at it and it certainly doesn’t have any significance attached to its exterior appearance.  But for me it’s a treasure chest, my secret bounty.  You see, this rather plain box holds hundreds of small pieces from my earliest forays in paint from twenty some years ago.

They are not significant to anyone other than me. If you were to look in it you might not feel anything more than you would from looking at the old buttons, matchbooks and other tiny souvenirs of times past in someone else’s dresser drawers.

Many are clumsy attempts and most are deeply flawed in some way.  But for me, they hold so much more deep meaning than is apparent from a first look. They are my artifacts, my history, my ponderings, my inner thoughts and my memory.

They are me.

There’s always a special feeling when I delve into them, like that feeling of looking at old family photos and vividly remembering moments that seem to have happened eons ago.  I sometimes marvel at the brightness of my youth at that point and sometimes frown at the foolishness of it.  I see where I thought I was going and can compare it to where I finally landed.  There are ideas there that are dismal failures that make me smile now and make me wonder if I should have pursued them further.

And there are some that make me happier now than when they were done.  Time has added a completeness to them that was lacking then.

And there are pieces like the untitled one above from back in 1994 that make me just stop and wonder where they came from.  They seem like lost memories.  I know I made this piece up in my mind but can’t remember why.  I have skimmed over it a hundred times and never given it more than a shrug.  But today I find myself looking intently at it as though it holds something for me that I can’t just pull out of it.

There’s a frustration in that but since I know that it is mine, I don’t really mind.  I will have it for years to come and can question it again and again.  Maybe my mind will release the secret or at least form a substitute reality at some point, one that brings me closure of some kind.

Who knows?

Today’s Sunday Morning music deals a bit with some of the same feelings.  Well, I think it does.  It’s Hello In There from John Prine.  Visiting my father in the nursing home has been hard, not just for the visits with him which still leave me shaken a little after each visit, but for the sight of the other older folks in even deeper states of dementia as they sit in their chairs in the hallways and dining rooms.  There is a lonely blankness in their eyes that is heart-breaking.  You wish you could reach into them and pull their old self out in the open if only for a moment.  But all you can do is say hello and hope they hear the words and the feeling in it.

Anyway, this is a great old song from John Prine.  I hope you’ll give it a listen and have a great Sunday.

Read Full Post »

The First Red Chair

Posted in Early Paintings, tagged , , on April 23, 2016| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- FragmentsOne of the things in my paintings that is often commented on and asked about is the Red Chair.  Sometimes hanging in a tree, sometimes alone on a hilltop or in a field or sometimes on its side on winding path, it is one of those recurring images that I use as a symbol.  It has come to represent ancestry and memory as well as acting for a symbolic stand-in (or sit-in) for humanity’s place in the landscape.

When asked about the time of its origins I always say that I think that it came about later,  several years after I had been showing my work for a time.  I can never give a truly accurate answer because it just seemed to come around at one point or another.  It just started showing up.

But going through some early work this morning I came across this old ink and watercolor piece from mid-1994, at a point when I was still struggling to find voice.  It’s an exercise, an experimental little thing that I would quickly do every so often back then to  jog my mind and play with forms and colors.  It’s kind of a goofy little thing, not something I am particularly proud of or excited by.  I called it Hoedown.

But the thing that jumped out this morning was what has to be the first appearance of that Red Chair.  It’s a little cock-eyed, crude and worn but it is a Red Chair.  So now when I am asked I can say without hesitation that it first popped up before I ever began showing my work in galleries.  It actually precedes the Red Tree now that I think of it.  I guess I will now have to see if that makes an earlier appearance somewhere as well…GC Myers Hoedown 1994

Read Full Post »

Back to Work

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , on January 3, 2016| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Experimental Piece 1995It’s the New Year and I am finally back at work.  I’ve started working on some pieces that have been brewing in my mind for a while, some that are out of my comfort zone.  I don’t know how they will turn out and there’s a good chance that most of this work will never see the light of day.  I have found that quite often work that is too idea based or thought out never gets into any kind of natural flow or rhythm, at least for me.  I have plenty of examples from over the years that I won’t show here.

Occasionally a piece will come along that just doesn’t seem to work at the time but has something that emerges later.  For instance, the piece at the top was an early experiment from back in 1995.  It just didn’t click for me then.  It just seemed too worked and not free enough, if that makes any sense to anyone out there.  But the spiral of the sky found its way back into my work years later in a different form when I developed a way to make it seem more naturally integrated into the painting.  I appreciate this piece much more now than I did 20 years ago.

Hopefully, some of this new work will be good enough to show here.  We shall see…

For the first Sunday morning music of the new year, I thought I’d break out one my old favorites, Hank Snow, the Singing Ranger.  I have always loved his music and there’s something I find really appealing about him that I can’t really explain.  With his small stature, close cropped hair and the looks of a hardware store clerk from years ago, he certainly doesn’t have the cool appearance of a star.  Maybe it’s that anti-cool factor that I like.  He just did what he did in his own way.

Anyway, here’s his Rhumba Boogie to kickstart 2016.  Have a great day and a better new year.

Read Full Post »

Hogback Heaven/ Redux

Posted in Early Paintings, Music, Video, tagged , , , , on October 5, 2015| 1 Comment »

I am a little busy this Monday morning but I wanted to run something to replace yesterday’s post at the top of this blog.  Something a little lighter in feel  I came across this entry from back in 2011 and it made me stop.  It’s about an old experiment from my formative years along with a great little piece pf music.  Enjoy!

GC Myers- Hogback Heaven 1994Looking through some old work, most of which was done early on while I was still forming my technique and style and before I showed my work publicly, I came across this oddity that I noted as Hogback Heaven. It’s a goofy little scene of a rough hewn home and yard somewhere out on a back country road, the kind of place that I often passed years ago in my treks on the backroads around my home area. All that is missing here from my memories of those places are a barking hound and a toddler in a sagging diaper playing in the gravel of the driveway.

Whenever I come across this piece, I have to smile. I don’t know if it’s the subject or the crazy electric feel of the cobalt blue sky and hills and the red neon outlines of the house and ground. I’m still trying to figure out where that color came from. Maybe it’s a smile of embarassment that this little painting is hovering in my past. But there’s something in it that makes me not want to destroy it.

I wanted to set this post to some fitting music and in my search came across this other sort of oddity. Called Yiddish Hillbillies, it’s a vintage 40’s era cartoon that has had the soundtrack replaced ( in a very clever and coordinated way) with a song from Mickey Katz.  Katz was a comedian who specialized in Jewish humor, with Yiddish-tinged song parodies of contemporary songs of the time being his specialty. Think Borscht Riders in the Sky or Sixteen Tons (of Latkes). While much of the Yiddish-tinged wording goes over my head I do enjoy the klezmer feel here. A note on Mickey Katz: His son is actor Joel Grey which makes him the grandfather of actress Jennifer Grey.

Read Full Post »

Crawl Up and Die

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , , on August 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers Early Work mid-1994It’s Sunday morning which means I usually play a little bit of music.  This morning I didn’t have anything in particular in mind so I went to YouTube and just punched in something general then let myself be led by  randomly choosing from the selections that come up on the right side of every video.  It’s amazing where this will sometimes take you, sometimes to music that you know really well and other times opening new horizons.  Today it led me to a song that I have always liked by the Stray Cats from back when they were leading a little rockabilly resurgence in the 1980’s.

It wasn’t one of their hits from the time and I’m not even sure it is on any of their widely released albums.  But it is one of my favorites from their songs.  It’s called Crawl Up and Die and has a nice build up and finish, the perfect thing to kick off a sleepy Sunday morning despite the somewhat gloomy  title.

While trying to find an image to accompany this post and song I came across the old piece above from back when I was still forming a voice and working on processes.  This is among my earliest attempts at my reductive process where I put on a lot of very wet paint and pull off what doesn’t belong.  Kind of like carving in paint.

I wasn’t sure at this point where I was going with my work and was still considering straight  representation.  While I don’t think this is a bad piece, especially from where I was in my evolution, it didn’t have enough to make me want to move further in this direction. So I moved down a different path and, fortunately, it was the right choice.  I do like the mood of this piece however and feel it fits the title here.

Have a great Sunday!

Read Full Post »

Kabuki TV /Redux

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, Technique/History, tagged , , on February 11, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers Kabuki TV 1994Whenever I come across this little experiment from back in 1994, I linger over it for a few minutes and smile a little.  There’s a lot going on with plenty of bright colors and sharp angles but with a narrative element within it where I saw a person watching a Kabuki performance on their television.  But more than that I am reminded of the decision to move away from this experiment and continue in the direction that eventually led me here.

You see, I enjoyed doing this work, enjoyed the process and the final product.  I could have easily followed this path and been fairly happy.  But it lacked something that while I can’t really put a finger on it was found later in the work that I eventually produced in later years.

Heart?  Soul?  I can’t say.  But it was fun at the time and makes me smile now.  Plus the lesson in learning what you can and can’t be is beyond value.

I wrote a bit more on this subject, also set off from this little painting, back in 2010:

Just looking through some old things, mostly little pieces that are from the time when I first started painting, and I came across this.  At the time  I was playing around with color and masking, where you put something such as tape on the painting surface and paint over it then peel it away to reveal the unpainted surface underneath.  It can be a big part of traditional watercolor painting and I wanted to see if it fit with the way I thought and wanted to paint.  It didn’t.  But I did come up with this little abstraction that always catches my eye and makes my mind’s gears turn.

It’s always interesting to see these little pieces because it inevitably triggers memories of that time when every day was bringing new discoveries as I tried to learn more and more about color and different mediums.  Sometimes things clicked and it was revelatory to discover my strengths.  Other times, it was a struggle and the end product was muddled, labored.  But there was still something to be learned there.  Like identifying my weaknesses and learning how to strengthen these areas or, at least, downplay them.

I guess that this is the process for development in any area of your life,  playing up your strong suits and trying to cover your weaknesses.  Perhaps that is why I like to see these old experiments, to be reminded of my growth, artistically and personally, through the years. 

At least, what I perceive as growth.

Read Full Post »

Change

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Quote, Technique/History, tagged , , , on October 3, 2014| 2 Comments »

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

~Henri Bergson

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

GC Myers 1994 Early Work Illustrative Styling

If you have read this blog for some time, you probably have noticed that I periodically like to revisit old work, especially those early pieces from when I was still in the process of finding voice.  It’s an interesting period for me to look at because the changes were coming fast, sometimes on what seemed to be a daily basis, as new things were tried, some sparking new directions and some being quickly set aside.

It was a much different set of circumstances than the way I currently work.  It was a period of fast and furious fireworks, little pops and crackles with every step forward where today it is quieter for periods of time followed by louder booms.  I don’t know if I can explain that any better and am pretty sure it means nothing to anyone but that is the nature of this whole endeavor– trying to make sense of something inexplicable.

I was looking at some early pieces and stopped on this one at the top for a bit, looking at it closely for the first time in many years.  It’s from around 1994 and was at a point where I was still trying to figure out things.  It was very illustrative– I could see it being used in a kid’s book– but there were things I took from it.  The treatment of the sky, for instance, presaged the way my process evolved. It’s a pleasant little piece but it is far from where I wanted to be and even back then I knew it when I finished it then set it aside.  It was not an emotional carrier for me at the time and that was what I was seeking.

The piece  below , Into the Valley, was from around six or seven months later, in early 1995,  and shows the changes that were taking hold in my work.  It is simpler in construction yet seems to say more for me, seems to have some more fundamental thought in it.  GC Myers Into the Valley 1995

I usually take something from these little visits back in time.  The changes become more evident as the style matures then levels off, becoming a bit more subtle, less drastic but more confident.  But always changing, always recreating itself as it matures.

Or so I hope…

Read Full Post »

The Elusive Path

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, tagged , , , , , on August 19, 2014| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- The Elusive Path 2000 smWhile going through the group of older work that I have here in the studio last week I came  across this painting from back in 2000 called The Elusive Path.  It’s one of a small handful of pieces from that time that are still in my possession which means,  since my pre-2000 documentation was pretty spotty, that it is one of the few pieces from that period that I can closely examine.  Oh, there are a few others but they are pretty much misses, paintings that are lacking  in some way.  Some are just too worked over– I was trying to make something out of nothing and didn’t have the tools yet to  do so– and some  are just blah.

But then I pulled out this painting, one that I hadn’t really looked at with intent for years.  This was probably due to a bile green frame that put a taint on the whole thing, making me want to not look for too long in its direction.  I looked at it for a moment then decided I needed to unframe it before casting any judgements on it.  I just couldn’t get past that frame’s influence over the whole.   So I did and was truly pleased with what emerged.

Without the hulking presence of that green frame, this piece felt new again, as though it had a grasp of where I was wanting the work to go at that point and was moving in that direction.  Oh, there have been changes, evolutions of elements and color-handling but the forms and lines are in the continuum.  Plus it held one of the earliest incarnations of the Red Tree which had more or less premiered at my first solo show, fittingly titled RedTree, at the Principle Gallery in 2000.

I’m sitting here this morning looking at this piece now and it seems so different than the painting I had thought of  for all these years as simply being the unfortunate picture trapped in a horrible frame.  It feels alive and new now and I feel a sense of pride in it that I never expected.  I’m looking at it next to a new painting in progress and even though the new one is being painted in a different process with some elements that were not in my vocabulary back in 2000, there is no denying the line that runs from one to the other.

They are one and the same in being true expressions of what I am or desire to be.

And maybe that is the lesson here.  We might be obscured by our trappings, as this painting was by that frame, but if we remain patient and true to what we believe to be our best self we will eventually find a way forward, find our way to our desired destination.  We can find that elusive path.

 

Read Full Post »

American Music

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , on June 16, 2014| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- American Music 1994Last week I wrote about going through some old work and coming across work that had been lost in my memory, work that I seemed to recognize but couldn’t quite remember the how or why of it.  Didn’t have that recollection of the moment that I usually have with my work where I can recall the emotion of that time, recall the instant it excited me and came to life for me.  You know it’s your own work but it remains an enigma, a question.  This is another that I came across last week.  It was marked as being from 1994 and was titled American Music across the bottom.

I have looked at this piece a number of times over the year and know that it came from a time when I was experimenting on an almost constant basis, trying to capture that thing in my mind that I couldn’t quite identify but knew instinctively was there.  All kinds of things poured out, most eventually set aside like this one.   And through the years, looking at this piece always makes me question why I wrote  American Music across the bottom of the sheet it was painted on.  I don’t know if I saw some rhythm in this that reminded me of a generic American music or if I had been listening to some old music.  The Blasters, fronted by Phil Alvin, had a song of that name in the early 80’s that I always liked so maybe that played a part.

But the fact is that I just don’t know.  And there’s something interesting in that, that I get to look at a piece and try to figure out what the artist was thinking without really being sure.  It’s not too often that you get to do that with your own work. And I think that’s why I gravitate to this piece whenever I go through my old stuff.

An enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in paint.

Here’s the Blasters with their version of American Music.  Maybe you can figure it out.

 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »