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Posts Tagged ‘Erie PA’

Upcoming Events

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on September 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers-Into the Valley of Color smThe summer shows are past now as I turn to the autumn months where there are a couple of things on my calendar.  First, on September 13th, I will be giving a Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.  It begins at 1 PM and runs for an hour or so.  There will be a drawing for an original  painting of mine to be given to someone in attendance plus there will be some other surprises.  I am going through my painting here in the studio trying to decide which piece will be the prize this year.  There are some strong contenders, all having some personal meaning for me.

I will also be bringing a small group of new work for the gallery.  Included is the piece shown above, Into the Valley of Color.  It’s a larger painting, measuring 36″ by 36″ on canvas, that I have been enjoying for the last few days here in the studio.  It has a real presence that draws me in when my eyes turn its way.

Next on the calendar is a new solo show, The Common Ground, which opens December 5th at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA.  I have been showing at the Kada Gallery for going on 19 years and always enjoy my visits there.  I am pretty excited by the direction in which the work is headed as I prepare for this show.  I think it will be a very strong group.  I will be posting updates through the next couple of months.

So, if you’re in the DC area on September 13th, please stop into the Principle Gallery.  For my friend in Western Pennsylvania and NE Ohio, I will see you in December.  I had better get to work!

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Last Days of “Alchemy”

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on December 12, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers-- Ahead of the Curve sm

Ahead of the Curve– GC Myers

Just a reminder that this is the last week for my solo exhibit, Alchemy, which is hanging at the Kada Gallery in Erie until Monday, December 16th.

The show has been very well received and is one of which I am very proud, both in the content of the show and in the way it hangs together.  Gallery owner Kathy DeAngelo  has hung the show with her normal  great thought so that each piece shows at its very best in this particular space and in relation to the work around it.   This  care in arranging  the work gives the show the sense of continuity that I see running through the work in the studio which is what I hope others can see in the galleries.

So, if you’re in the Erie area this weekend, stop in at the Kada Gallery and take a stroll through the show.  It may just be the thing to calm those holiday jitters…

GC Myers- Maestro

Maestro — GC Myers

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“Alchemy” Review

Posted in Painting, tagged , , , on December 5, 2013| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers-The Attunement smThere was a really nice review of my show, Alchemy, that is currently  hanging at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA.  Appearing in the Erie Times-News, the review is written by Karen Rene Merkle, who has reviewed my last few shows in Erie and always puts real thought and insight into her words.  Thank you, Ms. Merkle, for taking time and effort in examining my work.  It is most appreciated.

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Post-Show

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Painting, tagged , , , , on November 18, 2013| 6 Comments »

gc-myers-internal-landscape-2012Well, my show, Alchemy, opened Saturday night at the Kada Gallery in Erie.  It was a good night filled with conversation with many folks, some longtime fans of the work and some new to it.  One of the highlights of the show was being able to exhibit my large and well documented  The Internal Landscape, show here,  at the Kada.

It is a piece that I am very proud of and it was good to be able to show it to the many folks who have followed my work in this region over the 17 or so years I have shown there.  It drew a lot of attention as it greeted show visitors from an opposing wall as they came into the gallery.  It contributed greatly to a very warm glow that filled the space.

I would like to send out a resounding Thank You to everyone who came out to the show on Saturday.  It is always inspiring to get the feedback that I receive from these shows and for that I am gratefully indebted.

Also, a heartfelt thank you to Kathy and Joe DeAngelo, owners of the Kada Gallery.  I have known Kathy since the early days of 1996 when she took me on as a relatively new artist, having only shown my work for a year or so before coming across through an act of serendipity.

Kathy, along with Joe, has been one  of the most, if not the most, vocal advocates of  my work over these many years, always encouraging me to continue further into my work.  By that,  I mean she always gave me the freedom to explore new directions and has never pressured me to stay at any one point on my artistic path or tried to direct the work in any way.  She and Joe have always been eager to see the new and different paths that I have explored over this time and that is a wonderfully liberating thing for any artist.  Thank you, Kathy and Joe, and thanks to their new young staffers, Morgan and Emily, whose youthful  spirit  and enthusiasm is wonderful to behold in the gallery.

Thanks, everyone involved,  for a great show.  Once again, it has been my pleasure.

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Off to the Show

Posted in Current Events, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , , on November 16, 2013| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Forever and EverI am heading out to Erie later this morning for tonight’s opening reception for my show, Alchemy, at the Kada Gallery.  While I am always a bit nervous beefore any of these solo shows, the ride out to Erie generally has a calming effect.  It is a simple and quiet  ride through rural western New York on a highway that sometimes feels deserted, with hardly another car appearing at certain points.  The landscape is a mix of rolling hills that skirt the Allegheny National Forest before leveling off into a plain that runs to the Great Lakes, Lake Erie in this case.  It is sparsely populated and airily wide open.  I think this is an image of New York that would surprise many people. I know that it’s a ride that always has a calming effect for me.

The painting, Forever and Ever,  above is a small piece, 6″ by 6″ on paper, that is include in this show.  It is another take on the Baucis and Philemon myth that I have described here several times in the past.  I really like the vivid tones of the sky and the landscape here.  They seem to give it the other-worldly feel that I think fits the story of the fated couple.

Here’s a little music that  has the calm that I anticipate on my drive westward.  It’s  You Don’t Know What Love Is from two of my favorites, Elvis Costello and the late great Chet Baker.  I hope to see you tonight if you’re in the Erie area and can come out to the Kada Gallery.  Kathy and Joe DeAngelo, the owners of the Kada, are wonderful hosts.  See you tonight!

 

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Alchemy

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , on November 15, 2013| 3 Comments »

“As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.”

—W.B. Yeats, Rosa Alchemica

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GC Myers--Alchemy My show, Alchemy, opens tomorrow night at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA.  I wrote last month about how the title, Alchemy, came about from my own  wonder at the mystery of the whole idea of how the simple act of smearing some paint on a surface could transform that bit of pigment and paper into something that is filled with emotion and meaning.  And not just for me.  It crossed the boundary of the self and reached out, sometimes communicating in a way that seemed totally beyond me.  The whole thing seemed like alchemy to me, as though there was some mysterious force transmuting these base materials– the paint and paper– into something pure and precious.

This thought has stuck with me for many years.  I often find myself stepping back from my easel or painting table, suddenly confused by the abstract nature of this whole process.  At these moments, the rational part of my mind takes hold for a moment and  questions the very validity of  the world I have created over the past two decades.  My rational self tells me that I am not  educated nor wise,  not brave or special in any way.  How can I, a base material myself, create anything that is more than myself?

But this moment of doubt always passes, pushed aside by my belief in the reality of the world I am seeing before me.  It may only be slashes of paint on a bit of paper or canvas from a simple and ordinary man but it represents something more.  It represents a faith in the human spirit, a belief in the uniqueness of each individual and the belief that we all essentially maintain many of the same  hopes and dreams for our lives– peace and calmness, for example.  It’s a belief that if I am pure and earnest in my attempts to create this world, it makes this work  valid and real, as filled with feeling  and meaning as any work from anyone.

There must be alchemy at play, somewhere in here…

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Inner Realm

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on November 14, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Take refuge in silence. You can be here or there or anywhere. Fixed in silence, established in the inner ‘I’, you can be as you are. The world will never perturb you if you are well founded upon the tranquility within. Gather your thoughts within. Find out the thought centre and discover your Self-equipoise. In storm and turmoil be calm and silent. Watch the events around as a witness. The world is a drama. Be a witness, inturned and introspective.

– Ramana Maharshi

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GC Myers- Inner Realm I often speak of seeking quiet, even absolute silence. I all too often come up short in my search, usually the victim of my own fears and shortcomings which cause me to fill the void around me with sound and chaos.

Silence is pushed aside.

It is only in those times when I allow myself to be pulled completely into my work that I feel the silence slowly creeping back in, stilling the fears and doubts that seem to wail around me like sirens at times.  It is at these moments while painting that I  feel in a small way as though I am like a witness  that the great guru Ramana Maharsi advises us to be in the quote above.

I am calm and silent.  I watch and gather my inner thoughts as I feel myself melding with the colors and forms before me.  It is absolute peace as I go deeper into this inner realm.

That’s as close as I can describe in words the feeling I have when I lose myself to painting.  The painting above, Inner Realm, a 12″ by 12″ canvas, is an example of this feeling.  It is a simple and quiet but harmonious and full.  It feels outside of time, always in the present.  It is not fearful of the future or regretful of the past.  It is just as it is– quiet and placid.

All that I seek.

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Inner Realm is part of Alchemy, my solo show at the Kada Gallery, opening Saturday, November 16th, with a reception from 6-9 PM.

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Ahead of the Curve

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , , on November 9, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers-- Ahead of the Curve smThis new painting, titled Ahead of the Curve, is a 20″ by 24″ canvas headed in the next few days out to Erie for inclusion in Alchemy, my solo exhibit opening a week from today at the Kada Gallery.  This was one of those paintings that comes quickly at first then is sat aside for quite a long time before I go back at it.  In some of these pieces, it’s because I just don’t see a way forward in it and don’t want to act before I have some inner direction, some small sense  of destination to follow so that the lifeforce I see in it isn’t squandered.

On others,  I reach a point where I see all sorts of possibilities in moving forward and can’t decide which way to move.  I become paralyzed.  Such was the case with this painting.  I built this from the bottom, as I often do, and had allowed the multi-colored mound of fields to grow.  I loved the color and curve of it and the way the smaller green mound jutted upward into the blank canvas.  I thought it was beautiful at that point, with no trees or sky or sun — just a mound with a forked road against a white surface.

So it sat for a few months and I would look at it every day, one day seeing it juxtaposed against a deep and receding field.  The next time I looked I saw I saw it looking down on mountain tops.  But it was the curve of the mound that spoke to me and directed me.  I wanted to create some depth, to move the viewer past the mound and into the scene itself but not so deep that the mound and the Red Tree that would adorn it would be just looked past.

I began to see a slightly lighter curved field with a road continuing through it, creating a closer  curved horizon. The greenish trees on the curved horizon appeared like the  hands on a clock to me, somehow representing the passage of time and I saw a sun or moon on that horizon so that the tree would be above it, as though it were ahead of the sun’s advance.  The Red Tree here is not reactive, bowing to the circumstances the world puts before it.  No, it is proactive, creating its own stance and its own reaction from the world.    It is indeed ahead of the curve.

I think that’s what this is all about, the idea of being proactive in carrying out and maintaining one’s own vision of their world.  Trusting that the sometimes invisible things that they see can be made visible to others.   That might be the definition of a visionary or a fool.  That’s the thing about being ahead of the curve– you may not be around to see which is true.

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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

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Cornucopia

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on November 4, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Cornucopia smThe cornucopia or horn of plenty, with profuse amounts of fruits and vegetables spilling from its end, is a pretty well known and well worn symbol of abundance and nourishment, seen often at this time of the year when the traditional harvest has taken place and we near our holiday of Thanksgiving here in the States.  The cornucopia has been around for ages, going back into the classical mythology of the Greeks and Romans , but  has been ingrained in the psyche of our culture and still resonates as a symbol.

Perhaps that is why the image of the cornucopia came to mind when I had finished this new painting,  an 18″ by 36″ canvas that fittingly carries the title Cornucopia.  When I looked at it it seemed that the landscape sat at the end of a spiralling cone that emerged from the sun here and the multicolored fields represented the bounty of the land that you see in a horn of plenty.  The orchard on the lower left could be a group of apples spraying from the horn.  The sky and sea shapes coming down to the saddle shape of the landscape reinforce  this image, forming a horn-like shape.  The Red Tree could be a bunch of grapes or simply the recipient of this abundance, serving itself up in gratitude to the sky.

I think this is a piece about gratitude, recognizing what the world has given you.  We all too often focus on striving for more without seeing the gift  before us that  we have been given in the preciousness of the moment.   Every day has a gift for us.  Whether we recognize it is our own choice.  That’s what I see here in the warmth and generous spirit of this painting.

This painting is also part of Alchemy, my solo show at Erie’s Kada Gallery which opens November 16th.

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