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Posts Tagged ‘Mythology’

The Mirror of Our Nature

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Omnipresence— At West End Gallery

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.

—Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers), The Power of Myth (1988)

I love the passage above that Joseph Campbell spoke during his conversation with Bill Moyers for the PBS series The Power of Myth. I feel that it describes beautifully the connection between the individual and mythology and art, at least in my view. I believe that we truly connect with myth and art when we see it as personal to ourselves, as being somehow symbolic of our own experience and being.  

Our emotions and reactions.

Of course, some myths and much in art may not speak to us on this personal level. There is plenty of art out there that doesn’t speak to me. That is not to say that it is not good work. Some is masterfully crafted and has an undeniable surface. It is not a judgement of quality.  just doesn’t speak to me personally and doesn’t reflect my own experience or worldview.

And I certainly don’t expect my work to speak to everyone no matter how much I may wish that it could. 

It simply cannot be a reflection for everyone.

My work, after all, is a reflection of my life’s journey. My experiences, knowledge, understanding, and being are mine, complete with flaws and limitations. Yours is completely different, as it should be. Try as we might, no two people can have an identical existence. I believe (without evidence, of course) that even conjoined twins must have differing views and feelings of their shared experiences.

But occasionally, there is a moment of overlap, when the work reflects a truth– perhaps a personal truth or one that is universal– that speaks to another and that other person recognizes something of themself and their own world in my representation of my inner world.

That is a magical and most gratifying moment for me. The fact that someone might see a reflection of their own life and experience of the world in my representation of my own that makes me feel connected to the mythic and the universal.

For that moment, I feel that there is a meaning beyond the mere surface imagery of my work. And I think that sense of meaning is something we all crave, regardless of the field in which we toil.

Here is a song I’ve shared a couple of times over the years. It may or may not have anything to do with this post. I just felt like hearing it this morning. This is Marmalade with the very 60’s sound of their Reflections of My Life.

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We Can Be Heroes…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Wisdom Beyond Words– At Principle Gallery

The hero adventures out of the land we know into darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure or again is simply lost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder. Nevertheless—and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol—the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero.

-Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces

“The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know.”  

This sentence from the late Joseph Campbell could well summarize what the work from my current solo show at the Principle Gallery, Entanglement, is trying to convey. It is a show about those forgotten, hidden, and unrecognized dimensions that surround us every minute of every day during our time in this physical plane.

They are dimensions made up of energy and rhythm woven into deeply entangled patterns. Some of these patterns manifest themselves in this physical plane, resulting in a template or pattern of mythic behaviors that have been manifested and recalled with reverence in the stories of every culture throughout history.

Patterns of mythic action that exist in every time and place.

Here and now.

In my eyes, this work is a representation of the psychic unity of mankind, a theory to which Joseph Campbell’s work adhered.  It basically states that all people in this world share patterns of thought and behavior. Patterns that replicate those that exist in the dimensions beyond our recognition or understanding that these paintings represent.

If you’re familiar with Campbell’s work, you know that the great myths, such as Homer’s Odyssey, are not the sole province of the hero’s journey. Most people, in every time and place, at some time in their lives recreate the hero’s journey. It may be on a smaller, more intimate scale. They surely will not see it as being mythic or heroic. But it is woven from the same cloth and in the same patterns of the great myths, those same patterns that I see in these paintings.

 I could go on and on but that’s all I want to say this morning. I have things that need to be done. 

Heroic things?

Probably not. But then again, who knows?

Here’s an all-time favorite song of mine, one that I have probably share a little more here than I should. It’s Heroes from David Bowie. The line from the song that repeats and resonates- We can be heroes, just for one day— pretty much sums up this post. 

We can be heroes…

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Demigods: The Dream Eater

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Dream Eater

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.

–Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags (1942)

King of the Night Forest 

I had two pieces in this year’s Little Gems show at the West End Gallery that were a bit different than my typical work. The liberty to experiment and show work that is a little out of your normal lane is one of the things I love about this particular show, which ends a week from today.

These two distinct outliers, King of the Night Forest and Eye of the Trickster, were featured here. They were representations of beings or demigods from a not fully formed mythology that only existed in my mind. I am not sure this mythological world will ever be more defined than it is in these paintings.

Eye of the Trickster

And maybe that’s as it should be. Maybe they should exist only to serve as a jumping off point for someone who might stumble across them someday in the future when they are deciding what should be saved and what should go in the dumpster. Maybe they will inspire that person’s imagination, playing to their fears and dreams.

Maybe. Maybe not, Who knows for sure?

After doing these first two Demigods— I decided just now that is what I am calling them– I felt I wasn’t through. I wanted to explore and expand this world a little more. I did three more pieces, all 14″ by 18″. a bit larger than the first two from the Little Gems show. The last of these three, The Dream Eater, is shown at the top.

The Dream Eater is a being that does just that– takes away and devours your dreams. Greedy and cruel, he is never satisfied. Even when all the dreams and hopes are sapped from his victims and they have been pulled down into his hellish pit in the netherworld, he is already hungering for his next target. 

That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Perhaps that’s why I felt the need to paint this creature. I don’t know for sure. When I start these things, I have no idea where they will go or what I will see in them when they are complete. They obviously represent some other thing that is rolling around in my mind as I work.

I doubt these last three Demigod pieces will ever see the wall of any gallery and I imagine the first two will join me soon after the end of the Little Gems show. I’m fine with that. In fact, these pieces and those from other years that share this same sort of difference give me a special sort of pleasure when I experience them here in the studio.

Maybe it’s because I know they are those parts of me that I’ve wanted to, but have failed to, withhold from eyes other than my own. There’s something freeing sometimes in letting the outside world get a peek at your inner world. 

I’ll show the other two Demigods sometime soon. But for now, I am just going to try to keep this thing from feasting on my dreams while I listen to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road from Elton John. It’s a song about the loss of dreams, one that loomed large in my youth and somehow got lost in the hubbub of the intervening years. I can’t remember the last time I pulled out the album or consciously listened to it in any other way. Probably decades. But I recently watched a reaction video of the song and was instantly reminded of all it was and is. Felt a bit foolish for taking it for granted for all these years.

We sometimes do that with great things, don’t we?

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Door to Bliss

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on April 11, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Door to BlissFollow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.
–Joseph Campbell

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I call this new painting, which is 24″high  by 8″ wide on canvas, Door to Bliss.  The title refers to the well worn quote from the late mythologist Joseph Campbell, shown above, that advises us that if we work at that thing that we truly love, it will find a way to provide for us.

It will find the door that moves you forward and will open it once you have fully worked your way to it.

And from personal experience, I can attest to the truth behind the words.

I was going to write a whole spiel about setting goals and allowing and trusting your subconscious mind to make the decisions that will ultimately lead you to those doors.  But I think that simple quote and the painting itself say enough without me muddying the waters.

I often use tree trunks in the foreground of either side of my paintings to act as a sort of stage curtain which further highlights the central figure.  These trees also can be viewed as door frame through which the viewer is invited to pass.  That’s how I saw these two trunks in this piece– as points that must be worked to and passed by before entering that desired location, that place of bliss.

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