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Posts Tagged ‘New Painting’

Larger Than Life

Posted in Influences, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on March 28, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Larger Than LifeI am currently working on a new body of work for my annual June show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.   I am calling this year’s exhibit,  my fourteenth solo show there,  Observers, and the piece shown here is one of the pieces that will make up the show.

This painting, a 16″ by 26″ piece on paper, is called Larger Than Life.  It’s a continuation of the Red Roof landscapes that I have been showing on this blog lately.  This piece was another that came from my early morning session in the studio when I had several images come to mind during a sleepless night.  It evolved into something other than what I originally saw but I am actually more pleased with the final result than with the mental image that inspired it.  In my mind I didn’t foresee the little peninsula  that is home to the larger than life Red Tree but, as I worked along, it  just grew out of the mainland on its own.  It seemed a natural fit and I never questioned it and liked the way the causeway broke up the two blocks of color that make up the body of water depicted here.

The Red Tree is, as I pointed out, is larger the life which is obviously the basis of its title.  I really wanted to make it unnaturally large and expressive, its trunk and branches more shrub-like than one might expect from such a large tree.  I had toyed with the idea of a simpler, straighter and more sturdy tree but felt it would alter the entire feel of the piece and wouldn’t provide enough of a counterpoint to the uniformity and order of the houses that were on the opposite shore.  I see the Red Tree here a connector, the thing that binds the everyday, represented by the houses, to the ethereal that the horizon and sun represent here.  It needed to be bigger and more expressive and so it came to be.

I’ve been enjoying  taking in this piece over the last day or so.  The diagonals of color, the running ribbon of the path and the curves of the shoreline keep my eye moving through the piece.  As I said, it is more than I originally saw.

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Redemption Bay

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on March 15, 2013| 6 Comments »

GC Myers 2013- Redemption BayEarly last week, I wrote about spending several hours working on a piece that seemed to go nowhere, had no rhythm or flow.  I was trying to force things that just weren’t there and the whole thing gave me an anxious feeling.   I  decided to count  it as a momentary setback and painted it over, erasing the failure and creating a clean slate on which to build something new .  I then went to work, trying to quiet my mind and letting the piece grow bit by bit.

This is what has emerged.

I am temporarily calling this painting, a 36″ by 36″ canvas, Redemption Bay.  It’s obviously named for the effort in reversing a failure but the name may fit in other ways, as well.  I’m still reading it and trying to decipher exactly what it says to me.  I can see many themes in it.  Cycle of life, external guidance and so on.

It has the flow and rhythm that was missing in the first attempt, elements meshing together to create a movement that takes the eye through and into the piece.  It’s exactly what I was trying to force in the failed attempt and came once I let the piece go on its own.   It’s been my experience that my best work comes when I trust   instincts over intellect.  I’m going to spend some time with this piece and see how it grows on me now.

So far, so good.

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Judging/ Game of Life

Posted in Painting, tagged , , on February 27, 2013| 10 Comments »

GC Myers--Game of Life FlipviewThere was a piece that I featured a few weeks back as a work in progress.  It is a 24″ by 48″ painting that I have decided to call Game of Life.  I thought it was strong piece at the time and have nothing that swayed my opinion since, looking at it on a daily basis in the studio.  But yesterday, as I was framing several pieces, the painting was laying on a table and from my vantage point it appeared upside down to me.  I kept coming back to it with my gaze , noting how well the piece kept together in an almost abstract manner with the balance of the painting’s elements still strong.

I was really pleased by this as well as reminded of this earlier method of judging my work, where I would flip a painting over then set it on it’s ends to check it’s balance and to see if it still translated.  I don’t do it very often anymore, instead trusting a judgement that has been shaped over the years that allows me to evaluate a piece incrementally as I work.  But seeing this painting inverted reminded me how well this simple method worked for me in the past.  It forced me to look at and judge the work in from a different perspective.  I couldn’t be lulled into submission by the scene itself– it had to stand on strong compositional legs that created a bonded unity in the work.

Now, I don’t know if this method works for all work.  I’m not sure all of my work stands the test.  Probably not.  But when it does pass this test, it’s a reassurance and validation that I really trust.

Here’s what Game of Life looks like in its normal state:

GC Myers -Game of Life

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In the Clearing

Posted in Influences, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , on January 11, 2013| 10 Comments »

GC Myers- The ClearingThis new piece,  a 16″ by 16″ image on paper,  has been a long time in the making.  I started it when we got back from California at the beginning of December and have went at it in dribs and drabs over the last several weeks, finally putting on what I feel are the last touches yesterday.  It’s an odd piece for me, darker in theme and feel, but one that makes me want to continue looking at it.

The idea came from the trip, from someone I met at the Just Looking Gallery.  He has some of my work and told me that he had an idea for what he thought would make an interesting painting for me.  I usually don’t get much inner response to those type of solicitations but I immediately had an image in mind as he described a simple clearing where a path comes to an end.  It was  an intriguing concept that was a new variation on the path that often winds through my paintings .

Does that path ever come to an end?   What if it did end?  How would that place look and feel?  All of these thoughts ran through my mind in a flash.  It was such an existential question with great symbolic potential.  The idea and the image ran through my mind for the rest of the trip.

This is the first incarnation of that thought.  I used the Red Chair as the central character here.  I felt that there needed to be a character of some sort in this space and didn’t want it to be a figure.  The chair also creates a new set of questions.  Why was it there?  Who put it there and who sits in it?  As the path in this piece comes to its conclusion , the wider clearing at its end gives it the appearance of an old keyhole.  Perhaps this is a symbol for the unlocking of some barrier behind which lay the answers to our greatest questions or  to some grand mystery?

It’s a piece that keeps asking questions and I don’t know if it will ever yield answers.  But it makes me want to keep looking. and perhaps that is its purpose here.

I don’t know– it’s a mystery to me as well.

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Clouds of Joy

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged on December 18, 2012| 7 Comments »

GC Myers- Clouds of Joy I have always maintained that my work acts as a sort of pacifier for me, a soothing respite from the outer world.  It gives me focus and brings me calm when I most need it.  And in light of the tragic events of the past week, I   found myself  in need.   I turned inward from the confusion of the outer world and centered on a new painting, one that was filled with color and light and a more optimistic outlook.

I call this 16″ by 20″ piece  on canvas Clouds of Joy.  There’s a forward looking sense  in this painting that is warm and  hopeful  while being, at the same time,  aware of the reality that is this world.  The clouds here, which for me represent an ethereal passing of time, are bright and beaming but are darkly edged with red peeking through their whiteness.  From their vantage point, they have seen   the world for what it really is.   Yet they still  reflect the light down to us in a hopeful way while absorbing the darkness of what they have witnessed.

Maybe that’s cock-eyed optimism.  If so, it’s no matter to me because I need that hope for what might be ahead,  need to believe that there is light on this earth.  There’s enough evidence of our darkness all around at this point.  I need evidence that we can shed this darkness and embrace the better parts of ourselves and our world.  Empathy.  Compassion.  Generosity of self and spirit.

And that’s what I see here.  A little hope that calms my inner whirlings.

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Just This Side of Blue

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on June 28, 2012| 1 Comment »

If they [artists] do see fields blue they are deranged, and should go to an asylum.  If they only pretend to see them blue, they are criminals and should go to prison.

–Adolph Hitler

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I never thought I’d be quoting this  particular German art critic here but I have to admit that this quote makes me feel better about my work.  Although the asylum or the prison have sometimes fell into my realm of possibility, it has been those blue fields (and Red Trees) that have kept me from either.

Now do I see fields as blue in the real world?  No.  Do I pretend to see them as such?  No. Maybe I’m not a lunatic or a criminal after all.  But I do see the blue fields in this painting as real.  Is that so crazy?   I don’t think so and besides, seeing them as such makes me feel less criminally inclined.

Above is a good example, a new painting that is a16″ by 20″ canvas titled Just This Side of Blue.  This translates so easily in my mind, having a reality  that I don’t question at all.  For me, it as real as anything I see in the outer world.  And the colors and the harmony they create resonate with me and pacify my tensions and angers.

Perhaps Hitler should have kept a more open mind on the place of expression in art.  In denying self-expression to others, he only demonstrated his own lunacy and criminality.  The lesson:  Be wary of those who try to control how you see things in your own mind.  That is our greatest and last freedom– the right to our opinion and reaction.

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The painting shown here, Just This Side of Blue, is part of my solo show, In Rhythm, which opens at the West End Gallery on July 20, 2012.

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The Need to Paint/ Redux

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , on June 26, 2012| 1 Comment »

I think I’m in a really good groove at the moment.  I’ve talked a lot over the years about being in a sort of rhythm when painting, when everything begins to flow spontaneously and easily.  I often am emotionally engaged by the work produced during these times, excited to find something new and stimulating in the familiar landscapes of my artistic vocabulary.  It makes me glad that painting found me.  Or vice versa.  That’s how it’s been the last few weeks.  It reminded me of a post, The Need to Paint.  from a few years back that I thought I would rerun today:

I wrote a few days ago about how I am often mystified by the meanings of my paintings and how I this makes me glad that I still have the need to paint. 

I thought about that after I hit the button to publish that post. I have often heard artists say they had to paint, as though it were some sort of exotic medical quandary. 

Paint or die. 

It always kind of bothered me when I heard this, as though these guys were saying they had some sort of predestined calling. Like they were prophets or shamans that the world, without their visionary paintings, would spin out of control. It just always sounded a little pompous to me. 

So when I wrote that it made me twitch a bit. Maybe I’m the pompous ass here. It certainly is in the realm of possibility. 

But I find myself kind of standing behind what I said. I do need to paint. It’s not some call to destiny. It’s not to transmit some psychic message to the world. It’s more a case of me needing have a form of expression that best suits my mind and abilities. Painting just happens to fill that need. If I could yodel, I might be saying I need to yodel. 

But I need to paint. 

I need to paint to try to express things I certainly can’t put in words, things that awe and mystify me. I need to paint to have a means to a voice. 

I need to paint just to remind myself that I am alive and still have the ability to feel the excitement and joy from something that I have created. I need to paint to feel the surprise of exceeding what I felt was within me, to go into that realm of personal mystery within and emerge with something new. I need to paint because it has given me the closest thing I know to answers to the questions I have. 

I need to paint because it is one of the few things that I’ve done fairly well in my life. 

Would I die? 

Nah… 

I’d adapt and find something new but it would be hard to find something that would suit me as well. So I guess I do need to paint after all. Call me a pompous ass. I don’t give a damn- I’ve got work to do.

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The painting at the top is titled  Knowingness, an 18″ by 26″ painting on paper, which is part of my upcoming West End Gallery show, opening July 20.

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Satellites

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , on June 1, 2012| 1 Comment »

A Place to Stand, my solo show that opens next Friday at the Principle Gallery, has a theme of self-sovereignty running through it.  The idea of the individual realizing that their life is their own kingdom and that they alone have rule over it is a powerful one.  This new painting, a 30″ by 30″ canvas that is titled Satellites, reinforces that theme while also pointing out that our lives also inevitably revolve around greater concepts.

It puts our sovereignty into perspective, pointing out that, while we may rule our own lives, we all are ultimately parts of larger pictures and that our sovereign lives often revolve around those.  It may be our work, our family or our faith.  It may be in our duty to others, our compassion, that moves our worlds.  It can be any number of things but what it  boils down to is that there is a motivating concept around which our individual lives revolve.

I believe that if we could identify that thing, that motivating factor that makes our individual world turn, we would all have a better chance at satisfaction with our lives.  A purpose is needed in this life and it sometimes seems that many of us stumble along without a hint of one.

I guess the question that comes from this is:  What is this motivator in your own life?

That being said, this painting is a pretty interesting one from a visual aspect.  It has great contrasts, texture and bright yet subtle colors that make it an eye-catcher.  For me, the painting’s strength is in the stability of the triangle formed by the Red Tree, the Red Chair and the moon.  It really gives the whole piece a feeling of sturdiness and assurance, at least in my eyes.  This sturdiness is supported by the solidness of the patchwork fields on which the triangle sits and plays off.

It will be interesting to see the response to this painting.  It;s one of those pieces about which I have no idea as to how people will see it.  We shall soon see…

 

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Liebestraum

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on May 31, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I call this new painting,  18″ by 26″ on paper,   Liebestraum after the title of the famous piano piece from  composer Franz Liszt.  Liebestraum translates as dream of love and there is a dreamlike qualityto this piece, in the way the two trees intertwine to become almost one beneath a warm dusky sky and in the way the thin white ribbon of a path winds rhythmically through the landscape in a way that seems to mimic the graceful weaving of the musical composition’s melody. 

Looking just now, I notice that the two fields in the center, one orange and the other yellow, seem to form a divided heart shape, like one of those pairs of lovers’ pendants where each contains a half of a heart.  Interesting that this evaded my eye before.

Yhe Hungarian-born Franz Liszt is an interesting character.  He was a phenomenon of his time, a womanizing piano virtuoso whose playing caused  an incredibly frenzied response from his adoring female fans.  There was such a hysteria over his performances that a term, Lisztomania, was coined by the physicians who studied the effects at the time.  We don’t often think of classical  performers, particularly of the mid 1800’s, as having the public persona of an Elvis but Liszt may have been the prototype for the modern rock star.  For you film buffs, you no doubt recognize Lisztomania as the title of the Ken Russell film from the 1970’s that featured The Who’s Roger Daltrey as the pianist in a slightly twisted telling of his tale.

The painting, Liebestraum, is part of my show which opnes next Friday at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

Although it is primarily a piano piece, I do like this guitar version.  Enjoy.

 

 

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More Than Ordinary

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on May 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture– however unreasonable this may sound.  The picture, if a picture results, is a byproduct and may be useful, valuable, interesting as a sign of what has past.  The object, which is in back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a more than ordinary moment of existence.

— Robert Henri

I love this passage that  Robert Henri wrote in his classic  book The Art Spirit, so much that I’ve taken the key phrase from it as the title for this new painting,  A More Than Ordinary Moment.  It is a tryptych on mounted paper  with the outside panel images measuring 10″ wide by 14″ high and the center 16″ by 14″.   It is set in a large frame with three separate windows that is about 24″ by 58″ in size, giving this piece a real sense of it  being, as its titles implies, more than ordinary.

This piece very much reflects the essence of what Henri was conveying in the passage, that art is not about capturing scenes or mere subjects but was instead about capturing a state of being, the  existential feeling behind the moment.  As I  have maintained for some time, my paintings are not about depicting the reality of the outer world.  They are more about capturing and mapping the emotions and sensations of our inner selves,  those rare things found all of us if we are willing to take the time to look.  They are internal landscapes.

I get a great sense of tranquility from this piece, a feeling that comes from the colors that somehow remind me of  the warmth of the crocheted afghans I knew as a kid with those sometime garish color combinations from the late 60’s and  early 70’s with olive greens, browns and  oranges.  When I think of those afghans, I don’t remember them for what they were as objects but for what they represented with those moments beneath them when I was warm and secure.  I didn’t see this in this painting until just now as I wrote this and now, looking at the painting, it is all I see.  I am instantly transported by it to those moments of supreme security as a kid, huddled under my mother’s afghan in my father’s house, carefree and safe from the world outside our doors.

It’s a feeling that I get less  as an adult and one that I need more often. 

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