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Posts Tagged ‘New Painting’

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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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?

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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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À La Mer

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- À La Mer smIt was a good trip down to Alexandria yesterday.  I was there to deliver the the work for my show, Native Voice, which opens this coming Friday, June 5, at the Principle Gallery there on historic King Street.

It’s always a good feeling to get the work safely into the gallery for any show.  There’s a sense of relief  in this step in the process of letting the work move on to their new lives but there is also a bit of excitement in seeing the work in the gallery environment, to have the staff get their first look and to see how the work itself looks within the space.

For the entire time I have shown with the Principle Gallery, in my 19th year now, the walls of the main gallery space were painted in a burnt orange color, one that really highlighted and complemented the color of my work and may have even, in some small way, influenced the direction of my work’s color palette over the years. But a freshening makeover of the space this past year brought a new wall color, a slightly warm shade of white.

At my first look at it in September, I was fearing that the color would be too cool, too stark.  But seeing it again yesterday, alleviated those concerns and it seems to have gained warmth and I am excited to that the new work, mostly deeply colored with a number of larger pieces, will definitely pop on the new walls.  In fact, the wall color is not to far removed from the wall color of the Fenimore Art Museum gallery where my work hung in 2012 and I was very pleased with how that worked out.

One of those pieces is the one shown at the top, a 24″ by 24″ painting on linen that I call À La Mer which translates from the French as To the Sea.  I like the mix of motion and stillness in this piece with its sky that could almost be an extension of the sea’s movement with ripples of color running through it.  There’s just something tranquil in the way the eye moves toward the sea in this piece, a feeling that very much reminds me of the tone of the old French song La Mer (The Sea) which is better known here in the US by the wonderful version in English from Bobby Darin, Beyond the Sea.

So, of course, for this Sunday’s musical selection I have chosen a version of La Mer, this one by French Canadian singer Chantal Chamberland.  I hope you’ll enjoy it and take that feeling into the rest of your day.  Have a great Sunday!

 

 

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Clair de Lune

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2015| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- Clair de Lune smI was going to take a day off from the blog.  After all, it’s the final day in the studio for the work in my solo show, Native Voice,  that will be heading down to the Principle Gallery in Alexandria tomorrow.  This is always both a day filled with stress and great relief.  There is still much to do on this day but in what seems like an instant it is suddenly done and I let out a great sigh of satisfaction in that the task has been completed, which is always easier when I feel good about the work that I am doing and that is the case with this show.

So the idea of taking the day off on this busy day was appealing.  But I wanted to really show this piece, a 24″ by 30″ canvas that I call Clair de Lune after the famous DeBussy piece.  I was searching for a title for this painting and was stuck, wanting to steer it away from references to the blue hues in it, when this song came up on the Pandora station to which I was listening.  It was a version by pianist Michael Dulin.  As the music played , I could almost see it meshing with the colors of this painting, the calming tones of the music resting easily in the blues and greens of it.

It just felt right. It fit.  So give a listen and take a look.  Maybe you’ll see what I saw.  Now it’s back to work for me– much to do before I travel tomorrow.

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The Animating Presence

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , , , , on May 28, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- The Anmating Presence smSometimes I am a little hesitant in showing certain paintings here on the blog.  Sometimes their photographed images just don’t fully convey the impact or depth of the work.

Take the painting shown above for an example.  Titled The Animating Presence, it produces a strong  initial impact with its large size– 20″ by 60″ on canvas— and its deep colors and textures.  The photo captures the colors (although not the depth within the colors) and a mere fraction of the texture but the  power in its size is lost on the smaller screen.  It is still a strong image but most people would be surprised at how truly different the actual painting comes across in person.

I showed this painting here a few months back in an early stage, shown now at the bottom.  The landscape was laid out in the red oxide paint I use for my underpainting and the sky with its first several layers of color, the emotional atmosphere of the piece beginning to take shape.  Many, many more layers produced the sky as it now looks above.  There are layers that are almost completely obscured, perhaps with only a tiny glimmer of it coming through here and there.  Looking at it, you may not be aware of it but its presence is vital to me, giving the whole thing the depth and life force that I seek in it.

And maybe that last sentence is a good way of explaining the title, The Animating Presence.  The more I worked on this piece, the more I began to feel as though the Red Tree was in some sort of communion with a greater power in this painting, represented by the light breaking over the horizon.

This is always a hard thing to explain for me.  As I have explained in the past, I was not brought up with religion of any sort.  I was never indoctrinated in any sort of system of faith, never led to have either belief or disbelief.  I was just here, neither a believer or an atheist.  But looking at the world I had a sense that there was something more, some unseen source of power that sparked all life and consciousness.  It wasn’t a benevolent god sitting on a throne in some heaven pulling the strings on human events and listening to our prayers.  No, it was more a matter of physics and light and energy, an unseen force that permeated everything– an animating presence.

Now, a couple of hundred words can’t really sum up the whole of  what I am describing or even what I see in this painting.  But it is this struggle to come to terms with this idea of that presence that I see in this painting.  That like those unseen layers of paint in the sky which give depth to the painting, one’s life is given meaning by an unseen force that we may never fully know or understand.

You can see this painting at the Principle Gallery at my Native Voice show,

2015-gc-myers-wip animating presence

 

 

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Eureka

Posted in Influences, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on May 26, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- EurekaI am in the final days of prep work for my upcoming show, Native Voice, at the Principle Gallery, which opens next Friday, June 5.  This will be my 16th show at the Alexandria gallery so my routine in finishing up in these few last days is pretty set.  Even so, it’s a hectic rush to get everything done.  For instance, even as I am framing I am still finishing up my final photography of the work.

For instance, just this morning I shot the 24″ by 30″ painting on canvas shown at the top.  I had photographed it before but the lighting  coupled with the blue tones made it a less than desirable photo, not really representative of the actual painting. But this one seems to hit the mark, capturing the blues in their actuality.

I call this painting Eureka.  The word is from the Greek, meaning “I have found it ” and was most famously attributed to Archimedes who upon sitting in a hot bath noticed that his body displaced an equal volume of water which meant that the volume of irregular objects could then be accurately measured.  That was not an easy thing to do around 250 BC.

But over the years, the word eureka has come to signify any great moment of discovery.  California uses it as their state motto after its use in the gold strikes of the mid 19th century.

In this painting, the bursting light which forms a corona around the Red Tree signifies a moment of  great recognition of some heretofore hidden truth, a discovery that forever alters one’s perspective of the world and their place in it.  It was not painted with this intent but the fact that the light is bursting from out of the blue of the sky is no small coincidence.  That is how these eureka moments normally reveal themselves– unannounced with little forewarning.

I’ve been fortunate to have one or two of these moments.  Well, one for sure.  And in that instance, I certainly felt like I was suddenly standing ablaze in the darkness that had surrounded me.  This piece really captures that instance for me.

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