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Posts Tagged ‘Miles Davis’

Harmony in Blue and Green

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 5, 2025| 2 Comments »

Harmony in Blue and Green— Soon at Principle Gallery

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

–Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island (1955)

This passage above from the late mystic monk/theologian Thomas Merton remains a favorite for me. It sums up everything I hope for in my work– balance and order and rhythm and harmony. These elements do indeed create a pathway to happiness, as I see it.

Maybe happiness is not the right word here.  Maybe a term like joyful awareness or even the word contentment better suits the product of these elements. Because that is what happiness is– the product of many contributing factors, not a quality unto itself. It only exists if we create an environment in which it can exist. Inevitably, happiness exists when we recognize that, in the moment, our lives have balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

And as Merton asserts, it is not a matter of intensity. It need not be a peak experience that comes complete with fist-pumping celebration, crowds cheering, and brass bands playing.

No, often these moments come to us quietly and unexpectedly.

That’s what I am seeing in this new painting, Harmony in Blue and Green. There is an exuberance in it for me, but it is of the quieter, more introspective variety. It definitely creates an atmosphere and environment in which I might find happiness of some type.  It’s one of the few paintings I have done featuring a tree that is not the Red Tree. Just this moment, I wondered if perhaps this tree was once a Red Tree and has begun to unite and harmonize with its surroundings, allowing itself to reflect the common bonds it shares with all things. Just a thought.

Harmony in Blue and Green is 12″ by 24″ on canvas and is included in my solo exhibit Entanglement that begins one week from tomorrow, on Friday, June 13, at the Principle Gallery with an Opening Reception running from 6-8:30 PM. This painting and the other work for this show will be delivered to the gallery on Sunday and will be available for previews, though the show will not be hung until later in the week.

The day after the show’s opening, on Saturday, June 14, I will also be giving a Painting Demonstration at the gallery. The demo, my first there, should run from 11 AM until 1 PM or thereabouts. 

Here’s a favorite composition that contributed to the title of this painting. It is Blue in Green and is best known from Miles Davis’ 1959 classic jazz album Kind of Blue. This morning, I am featuring the version from pianist Bill Evans, who co-wrote this composition with Davis. Fine example of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. Good stuff for an early morning.

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Setting Course

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 22, 2025| 1 Comment »

Setting Course— Headed to Principle Gallery, June 2025

Gravity is so strong that space is bent round onto itself, making it rather like the surface of the earth. If one keeps traveling in a certain direction on the surface of the earth, one never comes up against an impassable barrier or falls over the edge, but eventually comes back to where one started.

–Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

I am not sure that the passage above from Stephen Hawking is perfect for what I am seeing in this new painting but for this morning it will do just fine. The painting, headed to the Principle Gallery for my June show there, is titled Setting Course and is 24″ by 24″ on canvas.

Though from its outward appearance the sailboat here seems to imply setting a course to some distant destination, that is not necessarily how I read it for myself. As it is with much of my work, I see all journeying and searching not as being outward but rather inward.

The answers we think can only be found by seeking outside ourselves are often contained within. Often it is the contrasting and gained experience we find on the outward journey that provides the clarity to recognize the answers within. We find that we didn’t know what we thought we knew, didn’t want what we thought we wanted, weren’t what we thought we were, and so on.

We may voyage around the world but it usually ends, as Hawking points out, with us coming back to where we started– the destination within ourselves.

I see this painting and its interwoven nature of the inward and outward as another form of the Entanglement that is the theme for this year’s exhibit. We are contained in everything and, as a result, become the destination for our every journey.

Every course we set leads back to us.

Okay, my head hurts a little now. Maybe I should have just said that I like this painting simply because I deeply feel its colors and forms and that the boat here makes me think of living a conscious life of self-reliance and self-determination.

Maybe even that is too much to say.

How about I just say that there’s something speaks to me, and I hope it says something to you as well?

Kind of a long journey to get back to that, right?

Like the boat here, I am moving on this morning. Here’s a favorite song whose mood   and title feels right for this painting. Plus it feels like perfect fit for a cool, rainy May morning with lots of those same blues and greens outside the window here in the studio. This is Blue in Green from Miles Davis.

Setting Course is included in my exhibit of new work, Entanglement, that opens Friday, June 13 at the Principle Gallery with an Opening Reception from 6-8:30 PM. I will also be giving a Painting Demonstration at the gallery on the following day, Saturday, June 14, from 11 AM until 1 PM.

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Invocation in Blue

Posted in Event, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2021| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Invocation in Blue sm

A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood-pressure.

– Henri Matisse

Matisse certainly had it right.

For me, blue is the color of the soul and spirit and red the corporeal, the blood and body. Blue is the ethereal. Red is the carnal. I think that is why both colors play such a large part in my work. Actually, they play large parts in the work of most artists. They are two of the three primary colors for a good reason.

But in my work they often symbolize those two parts in us as individual humans– the body and the spirit, the carnal and the ethereal. Having the two come to terms within the picture and within myself is often part of my aim, something I usually don’t recognize until I am examining the painting after completion.

I think this new painting, a 16″ by 20″ canvas that is part of my new show at the Principle Gallery which opens next Friday, June 4. This piece is titled Invocation in Blue. I see it as dealing with that space between the spirit and the physical in each of us, about how we aspire to our higher aspects but are bound by our earthly desires.

Head in the stars, feet in the mud, figuratively speaking.

And that is sort of what I see here. The Red Tree aspires to the ethereal calm found in the endless blue of the night sky and the peaceful presence of the moon. But it is still rooted in the earth, still comforted and sustained by its earthly needs and desires. The patchwork of reds and purples seem almost like a quilt or comforter that mainly warms and protects but also restrains.

But even so, both of the worlds attached to each color have an appeal of their own. And in this piece, they dwell side by side, as they often do within some of us. It is a painting that has an acceptance of its place in the universe, that recognizes that we can and do exist in both the ethereal and the corporeal worlds. It is a painting of the peaceful balance that can exist between the two.

But, as always, that’s just my opinion. You might see it as something altogether different. And to that, I say, Good for you. That’s just as it should be.

Okay, here’s some music to accompany the painting. It’s also a great song to sip coffee by. It’s the great jazz piece Blue in Green. It is most often associated with Miles Davis. He is credited with writing it and his version is iconic. Brilliant. But I also like the version below from pianist Bill Evans who played on the Davis recording and was later revealed to be the true composer of the tune though he never received credit on the label or in royalties. It’s just a beautiful piece and I like to think it sums up the balance between the two worlds I discussed above.

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Romare Bearden on Creating the Personal

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Quote, tagged , , , , on November 17, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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Practically all great artists accept the influence of others. But… the artist with vision… by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences… molds something distinctly personal.

–-Romare Bearden

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This morning, I came across this quote from Romare Bearden, a favorite of mine. It reminded me of a conversation I had with another artist last night at the opening for the Masterpieces exhibit at the West End Gallery.

This artist, who has a formidable talent level that was obvious to see in their past work, is in the midst of breaking loose creatively in a way that is establishing a distinct voice. It’s exciting to see the work blossom, thrilling to see an artist take their toolbag of acquired skills and transform them into something unique and personal, something that moves them out and away from their teachers and influences.

It is interesting to witness this artist’s enthusiasm for the new work balloon in a way that creates even more enthusiasm. Each new piece pushes the next forward and forms more and more energy. And that personal voice becomes stronger.

It’s a rare thing to experience and a hard thing to describe. But it is certainly fun to watch when it does happen.

To go with the Bearden piece at the top, Jazz II, from 1980, I thought I’d share the Miles Davis classic So What. Seems like a good way to start yet another dark gray Saturday.

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Burchfield and Miles

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , on March 7, 2017| 1 Comment »

It’s a dark, damp day here that seems to sap the color out of the forest around the studio. All grays and browns and pale washed out greens.

It very much feels like the blues. The music, not the color.

I’ve got much to do today so I’m going to share a video that shows many of the works from one of my favorite painters, Charles Burchfield, set to the sound of one of my favorite Miles Davis songs, Blue in Green.

It’s a fitting song for a day like the one outside my studio windows.

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Nature Boys

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , , , on December 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Signals 2006It’s Sunday morning and I want to play one of my all-time favorite songs, Nature Boy.  It’s an extraordinary song from an unusual character by the name of eden ahbez, who I have written about before here on the blog, who wrote the song specifically for Nat King Cole.  The story of ahbez and how the song came into the hands of Nat King Cole is really interesting but the result was a glorious rendition of the song by Cole that remained locked on the charts at #1 for eight weeks in 1948.

Spare and elegant, it is an absolutely gorgeous song which I think is evidenced by the many, many fine versions of it through the years by a wide range of artists.  I thought for today I would stray from the Nat King Cole performance, as perfect as it is, to focus on versions by two other giants of jazz, Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis.  The first video is a wonderful piece of animation from artist Ros Lukman that has the inimitable Ella Fitzgerald accompanied by guitarist Joe Pass.  Just a great version as is Miles Davis’ interpretation  which is immediately below it.

Relax and give a listen. Have a good Sunday…

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So What

Posted in Music, Opinion, Video, tagged , , , , , , on October 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »

empathyAfter reading a recent Op-Ed piece in the NY Times from psychologist Daniel Goleman provocatively titled Rich People Just Care Less, which puts forward a theory that some of the problems caused by the growing inequality between the upper and lower classes may be the result of a lack of empathy by those in power, I was going to write once again about the the apparent empathy deficit in this world.  But this as far as I can go with it today.  It seems obvious to me that no amount of logic or evidence or words of shame can sway the actions of those lacking in empathy.  Need we  look any further for evidence than the current stalemate in Washington or the case now before the Supreme Court that will effectively take off all limits on campaign donations, further squelching the voice of the least powerful and most vulnerable?

No, I am not in the mood to go on with this today.  I throw up my hands and say “So what!”

Let’s listen to some music that fits the title.  Here’s one of my favorites, the great Chet Baker from 1964 with his version of the Miles Davis classic, So What.  Good music to chill to.

 

 

 

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Blue Christmas

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , on December 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I was looking earlier online for a video of the song Blue Christmas to accompany this little painting that I have used as a Christmas card in the past.  I wanted something other than Elvis’ version, which is the standard by which all other versions are judged.  I was amazed at how many different people have covered the song.  There are rock versions , big band and country versions from dozens and dozens of various artists from every segment of the musical spectrum that all seem to pay homage to Elvis’ particular take on the song.  There are different instrumental versions including a charming version on the harp played by a teen who is lamenting the loss of her homeschool teacher, versions from various handbell groups (I particularly liked the one from the Trinity University) and one on the ukulele from one of my favorites, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britiain.

It is an amzing array of sounds and styles that cover this beloved holiday song.  But I found one video entitled Blue Christmas that is another song altogether.  It’s features the trumpet of Miles Davis and the sax of Wayne Shorter and is even bluer in tone than the songs above.  Maybe it’s the odd little animation that accompanies it that gives it even a glummer feel for the holiday.  But it swings.

Take a look-

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