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Posts Tagged ‘Home+Land’

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2015| 3 Comments »

GC Myers Seeker of Light smThis is another new painting from the Home+Land show that opens this coming Friday at the West End Gallery.  It’s  16″ by 20″ on panel and is titled Seeker of Light.  It’s a painting that drew my attention on a daily basis in the days before it left the studio, the blue tones in it satisfying a personal desire for that color that often comes over me.

There’s something in that blue that, for me, creates a sort of color intoxication.  At the end of a day when I have been working up close, only inches away, I find myself smitten with the color, wanting to just keep painting endlessly with that color.  I’ve talked with people in the past about this, trying to describe how I actually have to consciously pull myself away from the color or it would engulf my entire body of work.  It’s pull for me is that strong.

And even though the whitish light of the moon seems to be the center of attraction here, I think it is pull from the blues that is the strength of this piece.  At first glance, it’s a scene that should feel wintry and cool but the blue tones here have a deceptive warmth, supported by the underlying reds and violets, that belies the natural coolness of the color.  It gives it a welcoming feel, inviting you in to follow the lines running in toward the light.

There’s so much more I could say about this painting but I won’t as it no doubt says it best for itself in the eyes of the viewer.

But that does lead us to this week’s Sunday morning music which has a reference to that color blue.  This song is from Van Morrison when he was starting his career with the Irish band, Them, back in the musical British Invasion of the mid-60’s.  Though they had a short life as a band, only about two years, Them produced some of the most enduring music from that era including the classic Gloria and  Here Comes the Night along with this cover of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue written by Bob Dylan.  This song, with its haunting lead in,  certainly doesn’t feel its age, almost 50 years old, to me.

Give a listen and have great Sunday.

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“Home+Land” in the Gallery

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on July 11, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers - Heart+Land

GC Myers – Heart+Land

Well, this morning has been a quiet one as I knock about in my studio that now feel empty after delivering the work for my solo show, Home+Land, to the West End Gallery.  There’s a sense of relief and befuddlement hanging in the air.  Over the past year I have had deadlines always hovering ahead of me, always something  waiting to be done.  So when a rare moment without a deadline pops up, it takes me a while to figure out how to deal with this bit of free time.  But I will find a way through this pesky free time.

At the West End, they were planning on hanging the show last night and this morning so that it would be available for previews by this afternoon and I’m eager to see how it looks.  It’s a pretty big show and I think it will be show with a lot of oomph in the space but I can’t be sure until it’s on the walls.

One piece that I think will look great in the space is the painting at the top, Heart+Land, a large 36″ by 36″ canvas. The size coupled with an opulently warm feel and a sky that seems to reach out to you makes it a piece that is hard to ignore.  At least, that’s how I feel.

I know when it was in the studio it was a piece that drew my eye on a regular basis.  For a while, I had this piece along with several others set up in the basement of my studio in an area where I do my daily workout.  I found this painting a great one to focus on while exercising, allowing myself to get lost in the layers of texture and the many shapes throughout the piece.  Very meditative. It made my workout so much easier.  I’m going to miss this piece for that reason and many others.

Anyway, the show is in the gallery.  Please stop into the West End Gallery to preview the work and if you’re in the Corning area on Friday evening, please stop in and say hello.

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Believer

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on July 10, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Believer smWe have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

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This new painting, a 24″ by 30″ canvas that is part of my Home+Land show at the West End Gallery, is a piece that really has strong appeal for me personally.  Maybe it’s the warmth in its colors and the way its forms and textures flow together.  Or maybe it just has something to say to me.

I call this piece Believer and, for me, I saw differing forms of belief throughout the piece, as seen in the obvious reference to religious belief as represented in church and steeple.

The farm and silo I saw as a symbol of a belief in the earth and one’s own self-sufficiency, a belief centered on common sense and knowledge.  I saw the Red Tree as the believer, as FDR said in 1940, that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.  It is a symbol here of the dreamer, the explorer.  The believer of a better future.

The radiating sun represents a constant for all of these beliefs.  We all believe that the sun will come up each day.  It has always done so and I believe that it will probably continue that way for the foreseeable future.

I guess the point is that, unless we have abandoned all hope in ourselves and this world, we all have a belief system of some sort, whether it is in our own god (or gods) or in science and knowledge or in a better world beyond the horizon.

As for myself, I believe I’ll have another cup of coffee…

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The Aerialist

Posted in Motivation, Neat Stuff, Photography, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2015| 1 Comment »

Grand Prismatic Spring Yellowstone Wyoming Photo by Jassen T.I am in the last full day of preparing my work for my show, Home+Land, for the West End Gallery before delivering it tomorrow. This last day is always one filled with a great sense of relief and just a bit of anticipation as I begin to envision the whole of it in the gallery.  Over the last several days, I’ve began to feel very good about this group and am eager to see it hanging together.

But this morning I didn’t want to think about it at all and scanned some of my favorite sites to see what’s new.  Well, new to me.  I went back to the National Geographic site and came across some photos by a San Francisco based photographer named Jassen T.  I wish I had more info to share on him but his work on the Nat Geo site is great, mainly aerial imagery including the one above, a shot looking down on Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.  Love the jewel-like colors and the organic flow of the forms.  Just a great image.

Another of his aerial shots is the one at the bottom of a salt marsh in the San Francisco Bay.  It has a very painterly look, reminding me in some ways of another Bay area artist, Wayne Thiebaud.  I find myself constantly moving my eyes back to this image, taking in the forms.  I know what it is in reality but my mind wants to continuously interpret in many other ways.  It just sparks all sorts of thoughts which must be the sign of a good image.

Thanks, Jassen T., for the great images.  They were very refreshing this morning.  Hope to see more of your work in the future.

Salt Marsh San Francisco Bay Photo by Jassen T.

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Quote of the Week: Pasternak on Art

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on July 8, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers-Foundling smArt is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.

—Boris Pasternak

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I think Pasternak (author of Doctor Zhivago) is really spot on with with this terse definition of art.  Art at its core is, for me, an attempt to affirm our existence and the existence of that life force within us.

I really like that term that Pasternak uses here– ray of power.  That description of the force that drives all living things jibes well with that animating force that I try to find in my own work, that indeterminate quality that makes a static thing seem to take on a life of its own.

How and if it comes through in the work is the interesting thing for me.  Sometimes, despite my extreme efforts, I cannot find that life force.  Maybe I should say because of my extreme efforts instead of despite.  Sometimes it seems as though trying to consciously find that thing prevents it from being found. It often finally appears when I don’t focus on that aspect and lose myself in the process of actually painting– the colors, lines and forms before me.

It’s as though you don’t find it.  It finds you.

I chose the painting at the top, Foundling, to illustrate this post before I wrote that last line but it fits so well with the idea of that ray of power as well as the idea of it finding you.  This painting, a 24″ by 36″ canvas, is, of course, from my upcoming show, Home+Land, opening July 17 at the West End Gallery.

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Dissolve Revisited

Posted in Painting, tagged , , , on July 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Dissolve small

Another painting from my upcoming West End Gallery show, Home+Land, is the not so new painting above called Dissolve.  After it was completed and sent to a gallery, I lost track of it and thought that it had been sold.  But in fact it was on loan to adorn a design center in the DC area and was recently returned.

I was excited when I learned that it was still around because there were so many things in this piece that appealed to me.  I knew immediately that I wanted to show it in this show as it fits in so many ways.

Here’s what I wrote about this piece a few years back when the piece was completed:

This painting called Dissolve is another in the series I’ve been working in for the past few months.  This 24″ by 36″ piece is based very much on the same format as Like Sugar In Water, [a large 36″ by 60″ painting from that same time, shown below].  Both paintings grow from the bottom where they begin in structured blocks of color.  The path cuts through, rising from the geometry of the fields up to a plain that flattens out.  The path continues by the red-roofed house and is not seen again as it enters the broad yellow field that runs to the horizon.  The path’s upward movement is continued in  the spreading bare limbs of the distant tree which merges into the broken mosaic of the sky.

GC Myers- Like Sugar In Water

GC Myers- Like Sugar In Water

It’s a simple concept and a simple composition, dependent on the complexity of the color and the placement of the elements in order to transmit feeling and emotion.  These simpler compositions, when done so that they work well, are often very potent purveyors of feeling and are among my persoanl favorites.  The stripped down nature of the scene takes away all distractions and centers the essence of the work in the willing viewer’s eyes, making it very accessible to those who connect with it.  And that is much of what I hope for my work- to create work that stirs strong emotion within a seeming;ly simple context.

Maybe there’s more to it than this.  I can’t be sure if my thoughts and interpretations are any more valid than those of a first-time viewer.  That’s the great thing about art– there are no absolutes.  It’s also the thing about art that scares a lot of people.  Many people fear the gray areas of this world, of which there are many,  and desire absolute belief and knowledge in all aspects of their lives.   But art most often  lives in the ambiguity, the uncertainty,  of those gray areas and that can be unsettling to some. 

 Dissolve seems absolute and certain at first glance but is all about the gray areas of our world and our belief.  At least as I see it…

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Beginning to See the Light

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on July 6, 2015| 3 Comments »

Beginning to See the Light smHere’s another new painting that is part of my upcoming show, Home+Land,at the West End Gallery, opening July 17.  This 12″ by 12″ canvas is titled Beginning to See the Light, which sort of continues a theme from yesterday’s post as the title is also the title of a Velvet Underground song.

While I was working on yesterday’s post and listening to some music from the Velvets, I kept looking at this piece and when this song came on it just seemed right as a title for it in the moment.  It’s not that the lyrics necessarily jibed well but just the idea of that moment of realization that the title possesses seemed right because this is what I see in this piece– arriving at a moment of understanding.  The world seems calm and right but vivid in that moment.

Here’s the song that gave me the title.  It’s coupled with some absurdist/avant garde imagery from a 1968 Soviet film, The Color of Pomegranates.  I don’t know how relevant this is to the song but it’s kind of interesting?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOXZ8WgRCLw

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Some Kinda Love

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on July 5, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers-Heartshare smSunday morning on a holiday weekend but no holiday here in the studio yet.  No, not for another week or so as I get ready for my Home+Land show that opens in just under two weeks, on July 17 at the West End Gallery.  It’s been crazy busy the last couple of weeks but I am seeing the results coming clearer now and I think it has a real pop to it, one that has me getting excited to see the work hanging in the gallery.

There’s just something about seeing the work spaced on the gallery wall and not propped up in various positions around the studio that makes me see it as something apart from myself, something in and of itself.  It’s a bittersweet but exciting moment for me when I see a painting that has taken on personal meaning for me in the studio, like the one shown above, Heartshare, on the wall of the gallery.

It really lays claim to its own identity at that point and my time with it is close to an end.  It has become what it is and takes on the characteristics of the viewer, perhaps symbolizing things that I never saw or imagined in it myself.  That’s the mystery and beauty of this thing called art– sometimes one thing takes on many different meanings for different people.  There are no absolutes.

Well, it is Sunday morning and time for a little music so I thought I’d carry through on the theme of the painting at the top.  Here’s a song  called Some Kinda Love from the Velvet Underground.  Formed by Lou Reed and John Cale, the Velvets were one of the most influential bands of the mid-60’s.  A good rhythm to start your Sunday.  Have a great day.

FYI: The painting at the top, Heartshare, is 16″ by 20″ on canvas and is part of a series of paintings I’ve done over the last several years based on the myth of Baucis and Philemon.

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Home+Land

Posted in Influences, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on June 22, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers Home+Land smThe ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

–Maya Angelou

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This is the title painting, Home+Land,  for my next solo show which opens July 17 at the West End Gallery in Corning.  It’s a pretty large painting at 36″ high  by 48″ wide on canvas and one that fairly represents my feelings on how we are tied to the land, how we identify home with a sense of place.  This is the theme for this show as well as for much of my work in general.

I have long equated the idea of home with the landscape, with how we are shaped by those places that we know from an early age.  The rhythm, the shapes and the perspectives of the landscape that surrounds us becomes part of who we are , something that travels with us throughout our lives. Wherever we go, we look for similarities to that feeling of our home landscape.

It might be in the actual landforms or the way in which the vegetation interacts with the land and the structures of the homes there. It simply looks like home.  Or it might be just in the way the light strikes the land or the rhythm and flow of movement within the landscape that create a level of comfort that equates to that feeling of home.

I know, for myself, that there have been places where I have been where the landscape has been so different from the hills and fields surrounding my original home yet I still feel a sense of being at home.  And there are other places that, while similar in shape and having beauty and charms of their own, leave me uneasy and feeling out of place.  And there are places in which I immediately feel out of place in an alien way, places to which I could never fully adapt.  Definitely not at home.

I guess what I am trying to say is that home is a mix of feeling and place.  It is that place where you feel as comfortable and satisfied in place as the Red Tree in the painting above.

 

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Next Up: Home+Land

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Recent Paintings, Work In Progress, tagged , , , , on June 13, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers WIP in Studio 2015 JuneThere wasn’t much of a break after getting back from last Friday’s opening of my show, Native Voice, at the Principle Gallery, which hangs there until July 6th.  No, there was another deadline waiting for me when I returned to the studio: the July 17 opening of  my annual show at the West End Gallery, this year titled Home+Land.  The last week has seen me fall right back into the groove that was formed in prepping for the Principle Gallery show.

This is not an unusual pattern.  This is the 13th year that my West End show has began right on the heels of my Principle Gallery show and  in that time I have developed a way of coping with the tight schedule: heavy drinking.  Not really but there are days sometimes that feel like that might not be such a bad idea, especially those ones where the creative thread seems to disappear briefly and a bit of panic rises in me.  And believe me, that does happen from time to time.

Yesterday, for example.  I had finished a new painting ( the one at the top) and was still in that piece in my mind and not ready to move on quite yet.  I checked out my calendar to see where I was in relation to the opening and it just seemed, in that moment when my mind was still not yet moving on to the next task, that there was so much to do and so little time in which to complete it. A horrible ball of tension built within me and I found myself paralyzed with panic for a while.  My mind just stalled with that calendar imposed on it.  I paced around the studio for quite a while, trying to gain footing and move past this.

I knew that I could and that I would.  The experience of having been through this so many times before calms those nerves and lets me keep my eyes on what is in front of me rather than fretting about what is ahead.  And that is the secret to overcoming the pressure of a deadline such as this– staying focused in the moment.  Clearing the mind of worries about things that may or may not occur in the future and immersing yourself in the task at hand.  And luckily for me the task that I normally face is one, by its very nature, that normally calms my anxieties.

So I moved immediately to the paint and within minutes of the first brushstroke the anxiety seemed to ease.  The mind cleared.  The calendar seemed trivial and distant. All I saw was the scene that began to take shape in front of me and all of my thoughts were simple reactions to what I was doing on the canvas.

All was well again.

That being said, there is still much to do for the upcoming show and I am sure there will more incidents like yesterday in the next month.  But I am prepared and the show thus far looks and feels very good to me, which in itself is a calming agent.  I just thought I would give you an inside look at one of the parts of the process that sometimes gets swept under the rug– you don’t see it but it’s often there underneath the surface.

 

 

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