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Posts Tagged ‘KADA Gallery’

Full Regalia

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , on October 1, 2012| 4 Comments »

This new painting, which is part of my upcoming show, Inward Bound, at the Kada Gallery is a 16″ by 20″ canvas that I call Full Regalia.  It’s one of those pieces that I see as portraits with the Red Tree acting as the head and the mound below as the body.  The fields in this piece have a lively, decorated feel as though this personage might be sitting there proudly wearing the colors and emblems, the full regalia,  that denote its accomplishments.  Like a highly decorated soldier or a scholar in their gowns and sashes.  Or a tribal king wearing a multicolored patterned dashiki or other ceremonial robe.

There’s a sense of pride and strength in this depiction as well as an optimism I can’t quite put my finger on.  Maybe it’s the blue of the skies and the white of the clouds. Or maybe the way this figure is imposed on the background.  As I said, I can’t quite determine why I feel this optimism but I do like this mix of cheerfulness and pride here,  a feeling of satisfaction at having reached some plateau through hard work and determination.

As I said, this piece is headed to the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA for the show which opens October 20.  Hope to see you there!

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Name This Painting! Contest Ends Wednesday

Don’t forget to get your titles in for the Name This Painting! Contest which ends at Midnight on Wednesday, October 3.  You can get details from the post of September 25.  Good luck!

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Bridges

Posted in Neat Stuff, Recent Paintings, tagged on September 27, 2012| 9 Comments »

Here is a new painting that is part of the upcoming exhibit, Inward Bound,  at the Kada Gallery which opens October 20.  I gave this colorful  8″ by 24″ canvas a most obvious title, Bridges.  I tired different themes in coming to this title but it always came back to those two small bridges .  The bridges really stand out for me as connectors here, as though they are butterfly stitches holding the land masses  together as the stream cuts through.

The title could simply refer to the two small bridges that go over the winding stream in this picture but I tend to think of  the bridges acting as links in our continuum, links to our past and our future.  That would put the house in this scene that is between the two bridges in the present while the Red Tree would represent the future and the path in the foreground that descends to the first bridge would be the past.  The orange/red and yellow wavy fields in the center are also in the present and that makes sense as well.  Their vividness is in the now, not yet faded as they move into the past.

The other way I looked at this painting was as a  military portrait  of sorts with the Red Tree serving as the head and the stream and road acting as sashes of some sort and the alternating fields  acting as rows of medals and the house a large hanging medal of  honor. It works in my mind but I kept coming back to those bridges and their symbolism for our connectivity to the past and future.  I think I’ll stick with the simple Bridges.

Speaking of titles, don’t forget to get in your titles for the Name This Painting! contest that started yesterday.  Just come up with the best title for the painting shown to the left and you could walk away with a priceless prize package.  I’m keeping the prize a secret but I think you will be pleasantly surprised.  Hint: It’s not a Mercedes or a Maytag refrigerator.

Rules are simple: Send your titles in as a comment on this blog or email me at info@gcmyers.com by midnight of next Wednesday, October 3.  All the titles will be affixed tot he back of this painting for posterity so even in you don’t come up with the winning title, your title will live on.

So, put on your thinking caps and send me your titles!  Good luck!

 

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Name This Painting — A Contest!

Posted in Neat Stuff, Recent Paintings, tagged , on September 25, 2012| 29 Comments »

I haven’t done this in a few years but I was looking at this new piece that is headed for next month’s show at the Kada Gallery, trying to figure out what it was saying to me and a thought came to me.  Why not ask you guys what you would  title it?  I’ve done this a few times over the years and I always get a great mix of responses.

Here’s how it will work:  You can either post your suggested titles here on the blog as a comment or, if you prefer a bit more  privacy,  you can email them to me at info@gcmyers.com.   The contest will be open until Midnight of next Wednesday, October 3.  All titles will be documented and affixed to the back of the painting  so that posterity can get a load of  how we thought back in the day.  The person who submits the winning title will receive a prize package that includes a signed copy of my book and a special surprise or two.

The painting shown is a 6″ by 12″ piece on paper.  That’s all I will tell you.  You fill in the blanks with your own title.  I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

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Next Up– Inward Bound

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , on September 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It’s been a busy summer with two solo gallery exhibits in the rearview mirror and the show of my work which is currently hanging at the Fenimore Art Museum.  But there’s no time to put it on autopilot and cruise.  I have a busy fall schedule with two more solo shows upcoming, one in October at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA and the other in early December at the Just Looking Gallery in San Luis Obispo, CA.  I am pretty excited about both of these shows and will provide details on the California show later.

But first up is the Kada Gallery show, one that I do every other year.  This Erie gallery is ran by Kathy and Joe DeAngelo, two of the most wonderful people  I have been lucky enough to stumble across in this business.  They  make you feel incredibly welcome the moment you walk in their gallery.  Kathy takes great interest in the artwork and tries to gather as much info about each painting that I bring, wanting to be able to provide potential collectors with any detail that they might desire.  From an artist’s standpoint, she’s a dream representative for my work– someone who connects with it and radiates an enthusiasm for it.

The show this year is titled Inward Bound and opens on Saturday, October 20  with an evening reception at the Erie gallery.  There will be a short gallery talk at the beginning of the reception.  I hope if you’re in the Erie region that night that you can stop in and say hello.  I think this will be a really good show.  The piece shown above is a smaller piece from this show, a 5″ by 8″ painting on paper, that is titled Hope on High.

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Wild Billy’s Circus Story

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

On my way to deliver some new work to the Kada Gallery in Erie, I was driving across the empty part of western New York yesterday, a couple of hundred miles of very sparse traffic which leaves you lots of time to let thoughts just randomly weave in and out of your mind.  It’s funny, the things that settle at these times.  People you haven’t thought of for many years.  Things that you haven’t done since you were a kid.  Sometimes people and things that have little meaning for you.  Plans and things you want to do in the future.

Yesterday, I was thinking about the circus for some unknown reason.  Maybe it was a thought of one of the circus paintings from Pablo Picasso. like the one shown here, or the ones from Seurat that I wrote about here in the past.  There’s something very visually interesting in the circus, with it’s costuming and showmanship.

But more than that it made me think of how I have viewed the circus over the years.  Growing up, the circus and circus style acts were big staple of television in the early 60’s and, I’m sure, the 50’s.  Aerialists, jugglers, clowns of every shape and size, lion tamers and a variety of other animal acts were often part of many variety shows.  I can’t quite remember all the details, but there was even a show that was devoted to circus acts. 

 As a kid, I was enthralled by these acts and performers.  Even my first date with my wife involved going to a circus that was appearing in our local minor league ballpark.  It was one of those things that was sort of engrained in my young psyche.  But over time, the gloss faded from the illusion of the circus for me.  I no longer found the idea of performing animals charming in any way.  In fact,  it bothered me deeply.  It also  became apparent that the  lives of many of the human performers were not easy either.  Their moments in the spotlight in their shiny outfits were short and masked the hours spent in second rate motels and restaurant while crisscrossing the  backroads of this country. 

The illusion was gone for me.

But  still, the idea and ideal of the circus in the mind brings forth strong imagery.  The tension of a daring performance and the anticipation of the crowd.  The aura of the spotlight and how all eyes were focused hard on whatever was going on in that center ring.  It was a great illusion and was part of my childhood memories. 

That was part of my drive yesterday.  Don’t know exactly why.  Maybe someting will appear in my own work.  We’ll see.

Here’s one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, one that fits this post to a tee.  It’s a 1973 performance of his image filled Wild Billy’s Circus Story. 

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The Returning

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, tagged on July 20, 2011| 4 Comments »

I went to the Kada Gallery yesterday to drop off some new work and to also retrieve some pieces that had been with them for a while, unsold.  It’s just part of this and almost every business, this  exchanging of new product  for older.  Of course, most artists try to dissassociate themselves from the concept of their work as a product but in the long run that is what it amounts to, in the business sense.  I know my work is a product when I deal with galleries as far as inventory andsales and such but also try to keep an equal footing with them in maintaining the artistic merits of my work.  It can be a fine line.

When I first started in this business, I viewed the return of work to me from a gallery as a failure of sorts.  My work had failed to spark the interest of any potential collector so there must be something amiss in the work was how I viewed it.  I mistakenly attached a shelf life to the work early on as a result.  But time passed and I soon realized that each locale had different tastes and preferences and that each gallery had their own way of presenting the work which affected how the different paintings were viewed.   After a time, I realized that the work was soon gone away to the homes of collectors, often after having been at one or more galleries previously.  It wasn’t a failure of the work when work was returned, it was simply not the time or place for those pieces that found their way back to me.  In almost every case, they found homes somewhere.

The sense of failure I experienced early on when work was returned also made me question the validity of my work.  I’ve often said that when you’re first showing your work, you want to sell every piece because every sale is a form of validation, a bolstering of your confidence in your own work.  So when work didn’t sell, it made me wuestion the value of the work.  But over time,  I recognized the error in thinking this way and actually began to hope that certain paintings didn’t sell, that I could somehow hold onto them a bit longer, as if holding onto a piece of myself that I had let go too soon.

So yesterday, when I picked up several paintings, including the one above,  I wasn’t disappointed.  Instead I was almost excited to see these paintings, to have them in my hands again.  Even now, as I glance over them scattered around the studio, I get a great sense of pleasure and fullness of self in having them there even though I know that eventually most will be gone.  Some I take great pride in and some have some sort of  personal bond.  But all feel like parts of me and, for the moment, it’s good to have these parts of myself back.

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This Tornado Loves You

Posted in Video, tagged , on July 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Well, my shows are completed and hung but that doesn’t mean my work is done.  Already I am prepping for next year and starting new work, new images based on ideas that arose in the final days before this year’s shows.  On July 28th, I have a gallery talk at the West End and today I’m on the road, taking a swing over to Erie to see my friends at the Kada Gallery to deliver some new pieces and talk over plans for future shows there.  They have shown my work for 15 years now but it seems like it was only yesterday since I first met owners Kathy and Joe.  Great folks.

As I often do on such days, I leave you with a bit of travelling music.  Today, it’s once again Neko Case, a favorite of mine with This Tornado Loves You.  Have a great day!

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Feeling the Fish

Posted in Biographical, Painting, tagged , , on November 16, 2010| 4 Comments »

I had an interesting conversation at the opening a week or so back at the Kada Gallery in Erie.  It was near the end of the night and John D’Angelo, the brother of Joe D’Angelo who owns the gallery along with wife Kathy, approached me.  John is in his 80’s but it is not an old 80’s.  He is vibrant and filled with energy.  He is also a very talented man.   After his retirement, John started carving full size carousel animals, copying the masters who crafted the beautiful creatures that adorned the merry-go-rounds of the late 1800’s and the early parts of the 1900’s.  His beautiful beasts were the subject of a show at the gallery that drew huge crowds and raves.

We talked for a short while about the paintings then I asked him more about his carvings.  He talked about  how he just couldn’t sell them.  Not because there was no demand.  On the contrary, he described how many people were upset that he wouldn’t put a price on them, wouldn’t part with them at the show.  He said he only gave them away to family members and held on to the rest.  He talked about the joy of carving the animals and how, after he was done, he would run his hands over the large smooth carvings and be filled with wonder as to how he had done this.  It seemed beyond him, more than he was capable of doing.  He asked if I ever finsihed a painting then ran my hands over it with that same feeling.

I immediately knew the feeling he described.  In fact, it brought back a memory of the piece shown above, Big Fish.  It is a large wide painting that is over 60″ wide in its frame and now spends its days in a very prestigious office in DC.  When it was still in my studio, I was part of a project for a book by photographer Barbara Hall Blumer where she would visit artists’ studios and chronicle them in their work environment.  On the day she visited my old studio, which was infinitely more rustic than my current one, she had me show her around and talk about my process as she snapped away.  At one point, I stood at one of my painting tables where this piece was resting, nearly complete.  As we talked, I absentmindedly ran my hands over the surface of the heavily textured painting, feeling the coolness of the paint on my skin.  Barbara noticed and commented as she took a shot of my hands on the painting, asking if that was something I did regularly.

I thought about it and said I guess I did. 

Thinking about it now, I was indeed doing that very thing that John D’Angelo had described.  I often look at my work after it is done and wonder where it came from, how something so graceful came from someone so often awkward.  About how it seemed more than me,  just as John had described.  I needed to feel it if only to verify that it was real, that it indeed existed outside of my mind.  It’s a strange feeling and one that I was pleased to share with John that night, comforted in knowing he knew that same feeling of surprise and wonder.

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Good Reviews

Posted in Opinion, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on November 12, 2010| 4 Comments »

I received a very favorable review yesterday in the Erie newspaper for my show at the Kada Gallery in Erie.  I debated over writing about mentioning it at all this morning.  There seemed to be something just a bit too self-congratulatory in saying, “Hey, look! They wrote nice things about me!”  But unfortunately, that’s part of the business, this sometimes shameless self-promotion.

I’ve written about this before here.  One of the things an artist must do to succeed is to get their work and their name in front of as many people as possible.  An artist seldom succeeds in making a decent living without stepping forward and drawing some attention to their work and themselves, which is usually a very difficult thing for many artists, given that many artists tend to be observers rather than instigators of action.  Myself, I would certainly rather stay in my studio and paint  than have to go out and promote my work.

But it is part of the package, part of the job.  So I will mention this lovely review in the Erie Times-News from writer Karen Rene Merkle.  Visual art does not get a lot of press these days and unless your show is in a major metropolitan area reviews of any sort are rare.  Just getting press coverage beyond printing the details contained in press releases from the galleries is becoming more and more difficult, given the dwindling status of the print media.  So, as an artist, you can imagine my surprise and delight when I found that someone had taken the time to spend real time looking at the work and to write substantively on it.  And in an effective and well written manner, to boot.  Ms. Merkle, who I have not met, is a very fine writer and gives the fortunate people of the Erie area a much deeper examination into her subjects than most would expect from a newspaper of that size.

To you, Ms. Merkle, I extend my thanks for taking the time to look at my work and give your opinion.  It is most appreciated.

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After the Show

Posted in Favorite Things, tagged on November 8, 2010| 4 Comments »

Well, I attended the opening for my show at the Kada Gallery on Saturday evening and came away with a great sense of satisfaction in my judgement of the work there.  It was a great opening that that was similar in many ways to a lot of my openings- a nice sized crowd with most of the attention diirected at the work on the wall. 

 I’ve been to many openings where there are big crowds and a lot of hubbub but when you look around, there are very few people spending much time examining the work.  These are primarily social events and the attendees are primarily faced inward, speaking to one another.  I’ve noticed that my shows often have more people facing out toward the walls, spending less time gabbing and giving most of their attention to the paintings. 

This gives the show a quiet atmosphere which used to unnerve me a bit because I was mistaking noise and conversation for excitement with the work.  Over the years I have found this to be often the reverse.  A quiet crowd ususally means they are really looking and interacting with the walls which was the case Saturday.  The number of sales which was considerable,  was also a great indicator of the interest of the attendees.

While the sales are great, they are secondary to the conversations I get to have with my collectors.  I’ve said it here before that I believe I have the best collectors anywhere.  They are really interested in the motivations behind the paintings, intent on finding as much info as they can about the pieces that draw their attention.  They let me know how the work affects them and what they see in it.  It is very gratifying and a validation of all the time and effort spent in the studio.  This validation is very energizing, making me want to be immediately back in the studio and setting my mind spinning with new ideas.

Many thanks to Kathy and Joe D’Angelo, owners of the gallery, for their immense efforts in making this a successful show and for their constant encouragement.  I have shown with them for over 14 years now and hold them in my highest esteem.  And many, many thanks to everyone who showed up on a busy Saturday night to view the show.  I enjoyed speaking with each and every one of you and carry many our conversations with me.

So today I am back in the studio, very pleased with this show and eager to have paint on my hands again.  Time to get back to work.

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