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Posts Tagged ‘Future’

Giacomo Costa’s Future

Posted in Architecture, Photography, tagged , , , on February 15, 2014| 2 Comments »

Giacomo Costa- Post Natural

Giacomo Costa- Post Natural

The last post, Brighter Days Ahead, featured a painting that dealt with the anticipation of the future.  The perspective of that painting had a somewhat optimistic and hopeful vision of what might be ahead.  There are, of course, grimmer visions of the future out there.  I  was reminded of this early this morning when I came across the photos of Italian photographer/artist Giacomo Costa.

Giacomo Costa- The Chronicles of Time book coverCosta uses digital manipulation and , from what I can deduce, extensive architectural research to create large scale images that portray fantastic futuristic structures and cityscapes in various stages of decay.  They are very cinematic, easily fitting in any big budget sci-fi thriller,  yet stand on their own as pure, thought provoking imagery.  It was the cover of his book,  The Chronicles of Time, shown here on the right, that caught my eye.  I wasn’t aware of Costa’s work and thought this was a real building, one so fantastic and amorphous  that I couldn’t believe I had never seen it before this.

It may be a grimmer future, albeit one that may be a  millennium or two or more away, than we want to imagine but there is something beautiful in the recapture of the natural space by trees and oceans.  Perhaps, we may not be anymore at some point but nature will prevail in some form.  And that is, in some strange way, comforting, especially if you believe that we humans are not remote as a species but are entwined on a particle level with all natural life and will have some form of consciousness, even among the ruins of a human civilization.

It may not be the future we wish for but it is a future.  Check out the work of Giacomo Costa at his website.  It will make you think about the future and, hopefully, the present.

Giacomo Costa - Ground 1 2013 Giacomo Costa - Atto 9 2007 Giacomo Costa- Aqua n 3 2007 Giacomo Costa

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Brighter Days Ahead

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on February 13, 2014| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- Brighter Days AheadThe future ain’t what it used to be.

–Yogi Berra

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I like winter and winter weather.

Maybe that’s part of the contrarian streak in me. I don’t know.  But even I am kind of surprised at the way this year’s winter has bared its fangs for much of the eastern part of the country and find myself looking forward to warmer weather.  You know, temperatures in the high 20’s and 30’s.

This new piece is part of the series of paintings that I have been working on lately that feature snow as part of the composition.  This piece, which I call Brighter Days Ahead, is on paper and measures 14″ by 24″.  There’s a lot of bands of texture swirling through this piece and a lot of embedded layers of color throughout.  Here in the studio where you can take in the depth of its texture and the contrast between the dark linework and the color, this piece has quite a striking appearance.  I am not sure my photography can fully capture the effect.

There is a real feeling of optimism and warmth in this painting, which gave rise to the title.  The colors of the sky and the sun rising in the center represents a warmer and gentler future, which  is obviously optimistic.  The future should be optimistic.  Anything less means that we have caved in to our fears, seeing only the worst scenarios,   and lost faith in our ability to persevere.

I sometime fall into that trap and follow the lead of my fears.  But history tells us that there are always two futures– those that we imagine and those that we make– and that the two most often are not the same.  Throughout history, we have always seen the worst in the future.  Doom and gloom, the end of days descending on us.  But somehow we always make it past that imagined future and beginning forming the next future to dread.  And it will come and not meet up with our fears.  Oh, it will  not be everything we hope because things, by nature, change and we always resist change.

The future is a foreign land to us and we will never be quite comfortable there.  It might not be perfect but perhaps it won’t be so bad.  Just a bit different.  And if we remember  that, we might even see the sun that will assuredly still be shining above.  And begin imaging a new future.

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