Painting | Redtree Times

Posts Tagged ‘Painting’

Two Angels

Posted in Music, Poetry, tagged India, Music, Painting, Peter Case, Poetry, True Blood, Valentine's Day on February 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

It’s Valentine’s Day. I went back through the blog archives and discovered that I sometimes don’t post anything on this day or sometimes post something off the subject of this day. One year, it was baseball. Well, I do love the game so maybe it was a Valentine of sorts.

I thought I would post something this year, a poem that I posted several years ago. It’s an anonymous verse from India that strikes just the right chord of love and devotion for me without turning to pablum.

Although I Conquer All the Earth

Although I conquer all the earth,

Yet for me there is only one city.

In that city there is for me only one house;

And in that house, one room only;

And in that room, a bed.

And one woman sleeps there,

The shining joy and jewel of all my kingdom.

—Anonymous, Ancient India

Also, below is a song from Peter Case, Two Angels, an elegantly simple song that is a favorite of mine and also on subject for the day. Surprisingly, it is a fairly little known song though I understand it was used on an episode of True Blood. If that doesn’t scream romance, I don’t know what does.

The painting above is an oil on panel, 10″ by 58″, that I did back in 2001. I cannot find or recall its title at the moment but am calling it Two Angels for today.

Read Full Post »

The Past Floats In

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Motivation, Painting, Technique/History, tagged Boats, GC Myers, Painting on December 23, 2014| 2 Comments »

It’s the time of the year when I take a slight pause and try to ascertain what the past year has brought and where the next year might head. I often find myself going back through my files, looking at images of long gone but well remembered paintings from the past. There are a lot of thoughts that come and go during this process. I will see work that bring back strong memories of the emotions that brought it out from within and some that leaves me wondering where it came from, it seems so different than the work around it in the files.

Then there is work that seemed to be a constant in my body of work that suddenly stopped coming out at a certain point. Boat paintings, for example. They were a minor staple in my work through the mid-2000’s but around 2009 they suddenly stopped completely, save for a few ferry paintings. I really have no explanation for the stoppage. It just didn’t seem to need to come out over the last several years.

There is probably some psychological reasoning to be found but it doesn’t matter to me at this point. Just seeing the work and realizing that they were a part of the body of work and may someday emerge again in some way is enough. Seeing these pieces with some time past makes me look at them with a questioning eye. Some are real anomalies that stand out among a crowd of colorful images. For example, the piece shown here on the left, Night Glides In, is a definite one-of-a-kind with its serene blue tones and placid feel set against a lone craft, vaguely Viking in style, that is headed inland. It could be the return of a warrior or fisherman or traveler or it could be something more ominous and threatening.

That possibility always comes to my mind when I see this image even though I personally tend to see it in more congenial and positive terms. More homecoming than home invasion…

Another painting from about the same time that also draws my attention whenever I am skimming through is this piece, Time and Tide. I always have to zoom in to take in the texture. The texture in my pieces seem to shift and change over the years and the texture in this piece is different than that in subsequent years. Maybe it was an alteration in the way I prepped my surface or a change in material but it gives this piece a distinct signature in that texture and in the perspective of the incoming ship within the picture.

Looking at these boat pieces brings back influences and thoughts that have faded a bit in time, making them seem rejuvenated with the passage of years and the gaining of new experiences in that time. I can see a boat or two floating back into my work in the new year.

We shall see…

Read Full Post »

A Changed Sovereign Solitude

Posted in Painting, Quote, Work In Progress, tagged Daniel Gilbert, Erie PA, KADA Gallery, Painting, Quote on December 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.

–Daniel Gilbert

****************

The statement at the top from Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert is one that I have found very true for myself and many of those I know, although sometimes we tend to see folks captured at certain steps in their changing lives through our memories of single moments. His words also has a certain truth for some of my work, as well.

One of the paintings that went to my current Kada Gallery show was the painting shown above, Sovereign Solitude. It’s a painting that has been with me for a couple of years now, one that somehow hasn’t yet found a home. It was a piece that really resonated for me and I found myself surprised when it came back from showing in a couple of galleries. It was in my studio for some time and I began to try to look at it with the imagined eyes of someone else. For me, it was complete but looking longer at it, I discovered that I was only seeing it as complete. I was filling in its blank areas with the knowledge of what needed to be done. Without actually doing those things.

So I went back into it. The clouds had been dark masses of red and they changed to have more lightness in them. The white side of the structure became much whiter and the tree, which had been barren, gained some light foliage along with a few falling leaves. The mass of color that was the sky was darkened at the upper and outer edges. Finishing, it still held that same satisfying sensation for me but now seemed to be complete, to not hold the blanks spaces that I saw as being filled in my mind.

I guess you can’t be afraid to change.

Here’s what I wrote about this piece a few years back. I think it still applies after the change. Maybe more so.

The word sovereignty often comes to mind often when I scan through the body of my work. The idea of the individual standing apart, self-reliant and strong, is an appealing notion to me, as it is to many others. This sovereign individual is still part of this world yet self-contained, it alone being responsible for its actions and reactions. It has made its choice and it has chosen solitude.

This is a scary concept for some, a life where we must take responsibility for our actions and decisions, where we relish our time alone in solitude. It is a freedom which we profess to desire but are often hesitant in pursuing. It may not be a freedom which suits everybody but for those who seek this sovereignty of self, there is no greater reward than living by your own decisions and beliefs. We may not seem significant in the greater world but we have the power to rule our own lives.

And that should always be remembered.

This painting is a good example of this thought. It has a warmth and calmness in it that I myself find appealing. It is like taking a deep breath then slowly releasing it, allowing the effects of this action to be felt fully. The pulse slows and breathing levels off.

Solitude found.

Read Full Post »

As Clouds Roll By/ Redux

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Technique/History, tagged GC Myers, Painting, Red Tree on October 17, 2014| 2 Comments »

Earlier in the week at the dinner at which I was speaking I was asked why there were no windows or doors in my houses. I answered that I wanted them to be somewhat anonymous and that leaving the windows and doors out allowed the eye to glide easily over them to the focal point of the painting. I didn’t mention that I have painted houses and building with windows and doors, usually when the structure is a central figure in the composition. I wrote a blog entry several years ago about one such painting. In this essay I also mention how I came to paint clouds in the manner that I do, answering another question that I was recently asked. Even though the painting shown is long in the hands of that collector, here’s what I had to say:

This is a new painting that I’ve just finished, tentatively called As Clouds Roll By. It’s a 14″ by 18″ image painted on ragboard. It’s a composition that I have visited on a number of occasions, this time at the request of a collector in Pennsylvania, and one that I always get great pleasure from painting, savoring the subtle variations that make each piece unique .

Even though this is a very simple composition with few elements, the great satisfaction I feel after finishing a piece such as this is something I can’t fully explain. Perhaps it’s the recognition of the things in this piece that fully jibe with what I hope to achieve in my paintings. The simplicity of design. The quietude of vast open space. The depth into the picture, even though it is a very simple composition. The inviting warmth of the house and tree. The languorous fashion in which the clouds roll by, in a way representing the slow and inevitable march of time.

It clicks a lot of my own buttons.

The clouds in this piece always take me back to the first time I painted clouds in that looked like these. I was not yet a full-time painter and had obtained a large commisiion that would prove to be very important to me. I was on a short deadline and was still painting in the dining area of our home at the time with large sheets of paper spread over folding tables. I was working on a large triptych and was nearly finished when our late cat, Tinker, decided to explore the tables. Bounding up, she stepped first in a damp part of my palette and ran across the three sheets, leaving perfect little paw prints in a watery blue tint in her wake. As the echoes of my bellow faded, my mind raced as I looked at my now very unfinished work.

Start over? No time. Try to blend them in to the background? Not with this particular style of painting. I sat and looked, concentrating. Wait a minute. The prints only ran across the sky portion of all the sheets. And they ran in lovely diagonal manner.

Quickly, I was at it with paint and within several minutes I had blocked in clouds where once there were paw prints. It worked. Tinker’s run across the sky fit the rhythm of the piece and the clouds actually gave a fullness to the composition that it had lacked. It was actually quite an improvement.

So when I see clouds such as these, I always flash back to my initial panic and the subsequent discovery of good fortune in this happy accident. Since that day, when what seems to be a disastrous event happens with one of my paintings I step back with a much calmer mind and eye with the knowledge that perhaps this is just a new opportunity to see things a new way.

Read Full Post »

Inner Perceptions

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Personal Mythology, tagged American Impressionism, Claude Monet, Fenimore Art Museum, GC Myers, Painting, Principle Gallery, Red Tree on September 22, 2014| 1 Comment »

This is a painting from a few years back that has toured around a bit and found its way back to me. Called Inner Perception, it has been one of my favorites right from the moment it came off my painting table. Maybe the inclusion of the the paint brush (even though it is a house painter’s brush) with red paint in the bristles makes it feel more biographical, more directly connected to my own self. Or maybe it was the self-referential Red Tree painting on the wall behind the Red Chair.

I don’t know for sure. But whatever the case, it is a piece that immediately makes me reflective, as though it is a shortcut to some sort of inner thought. Looking at it this morning, the question I was asked at the Principle Gallery talk a week or so ago re-emerged, the one that asked what advice I might give my fifth-grade self if I had the opportunity. I had answered that I would tell myself to believe in my own unique voice, to believe in the validity of what I had to say to the world.

I do believe that but I think I might add a bit to that answer, saying that I would tell my younger self to be patient and not worry about how the world perceives you. That if you believed that your work was reflecting something genuine from within, others would come to see it eventually.

I would also add to never put your work above the work of anyone else and, conversely, never put your work beneath that of anyone else. I would tell myself to always ask , “Why not me?”

This realization came to me a couple of years ago at my exhibit at the Fenimore Art Museum. When it first went up it was in a gallery next to one that held the work of the great American Impressionists along with a Monet. I was initially intimidated, worrying that my work would not stand the muster of being in such close proximity to those painters who I had so revered over the years.

But over the course of the exhibit, I began to ask myself that question: Why not me?

If my work was genuine, if it was true expression of my inner self and inner perceptions, was it any less valid than the work of these other painters? Did they have some greater insight of which I was not aware, something that made their work deeper and more connected to some common human theme? If, as I believe, everyone has something unique to share with the world, why would my expression of self not be able to stand along their own?

The answer to my question was in my own belief in the work and by the exhibit’s end I was no longer doubting my right to be there. So to my fifth-grade self and to anyone who faces self-doubt about the path they have chosen, I say that if you know you have given it your all, shown your own unique self, then you must ask that question: Why not me?

Read Full Post »

Red Chair 2002

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, Technique/History, tagged gallery talk, GC Myers, Painting, Principle Gallery, Red Chair on September 17, 2014| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- A Journey Begins

One of the interesting things about doing Gallery Talks, especially when there are a number of people who have followed your work for a while, is the feedback I get about the direction of my work or what has come or gone in it in recent times. I hadn’t even noticed until someone asked that my Red Chair was lacking from the walls of the Principle Gallery and upon thinking about it I realized that it had not appeared often in recent times. I wasn’t surprised. After doing this for a while, I’ve come to understand that themes and imagery cycle in and out of my work, attaching for a while to my psyche then falling to the back, only to resurface at a later time.

GC Myers- Night Watch

But having someone raise that point prodded me a bit and that Red Chair is in my mind again. I have a few images swirling that will soon be out, I am sure. But it also made me go back through my files looking for that Red Chair. 2002 was the high water mark for its appearance, especially in interior scenes painted in that style I refer to as my Dark Work— dark blues and greens over a black base. Several of them remain with me and are among that work with which I will not part.

But I thought it would be interesting to show how a series of specific imagery, in this case the Red Chair, goes through a specific time period, how certain elements are added or highlighted or fall away. The one constant is the weight that the Red Chair brings to each image. There is a tangible sense of presence in each, as though the Red Chair alive and contemplating in the moment. I think that is the appeal for me in these pieces– they don’t feel like still lifes but more like portraits.

Anyway, here is how the Red Chair moved through 2002:

GC Myers- Galvanic Memory

GC Myers- Little Red Riding Chair

GC Myers- Inner Sanctum

GC Myers- An Inward Look

GC Myers- Small Piece pf the World

GC Myers- Reason to Believe

GC Myers- Introspection

Read Full Post »

The Elusive Path

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, tagged Early Work, GC Myers, Painting, Principle Gallery, Principle Gallery. Alexandria VA, Red Tree on August 19, 2014| 5 Comments »

While going through the group of older work that I have here in the studio last week I came across this painting from back in 2000 called The Elusive Path. It’s one of a small handful of pieces from that time that are still in my possession which means, since my pre-2000 documentation was pretty spotty, that it is one of the few pieces from that period that I can closely examine. Oh, there are a few others but they are pretty much misses, paintings that are lacking in some way. Some are just too worked over– I was trying to make something out of nothing and didn’t have the tools yet to do so– and some are just blah.

But then I pulled out this painting, one that I hadn’t really looked at with intent for years. This was probably due to a bile green frame that put a taint on the whole thing, making me want to not look for too long in its direction. I looked at it for a moment then decided I needed to unframe it before casting any judgements on it. I just couldn’t get past that frame’s influence over the whole. So I did and was truly pleased with what emerged.

Without the hulking presence of that green frame, this piece felt new again, as though it had a grasp of where I was wanting the work to go at that point and was moving in that direction. Oh, there have been changes, evolutions of elements and color-handling but the forms and lines are in the continuum. Plus it held one of the earliest incarnations of the Red Tree which had more or less premiered at my first solo show, fittingly titled RedTree, at the Principle Gallery in 2000.

I’m sitting here this morning looking at this piece now and it seems so different than the painting I had thought of for all these years as simply being the unfortunate picture trapped in a horrible frame. It feels alive and new now and I feel a sense of pride in it that I never expected. I’m looking at it next to a new painting in progress and even though the new one is being painted in a different process with some elements that were not in my vocabulary back in 2000, there is no denying the line that runs from one to the other.

They are one and the same in being true expressions of what I am or desire to be.

And maybe that is the lesson here. We might be obscured by our trappings, as this painting was by that frame, but if we remain patient and true to what we believe to be our best self we will eventually find a way forward, find our way to our desired destination. We can find that elusive path.

Read Full Post »

Ego: Redux

Posted in Biographical, Uncategorized, tagged Ego, GC Myers, Painting, Promotion on August 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The time just before the solo shows and gallery talks that are a big part of what I do is the hardest time for me, by far the most stressful and difficult part of this whole art thing. There’s a direct conflict between my internal need need to seek solitude and the external need to discuss and promote my works and the galleries where they hang. For weeks leading up to events, solitude is pushed to the rear and the act of promotion takes center stage.

The ego becomes a foe at this point and I am soon tired of hearing my own voice and experience a bit of self-loathing at times. But I feel compelled to persevere out of the duty and loyalty to the galleries that represent me and the need to make a living for myself. It is the part of the job that probably is the hardest hurdle for any artist to clear, a sometimes unsavory task that keeps many artists from reaching their largest audience.

Here are a few other thoughts on the subject from a few years ago, right around this same time in the 2011:

I was asked yesterday what I was going to speak about in today’s gallery talk at the West End Gallery. I kidded that I was going , of course, to speak about me.

Me, me, me.

I went on to explain how I approach these talks, trying to read the group in attendance and finding something of interest in the work that sparks a dialogue where they participate. The hope being that they leave with a little more insight into the work and I leave with with a little more knowledge of how they view it. But that offhand joke yesterday about me has stuck in my craw. Just joking about it has bothered me somehow.

One of the conundrums of art is that you are expressing a sometimes very personal aspect of yourself in a public forum, exposing one’s weaknesses and flaws to the world for all to see. The need to do this is the need for an affirmation of one’s own existence in this world. I know that this has been the case for myself. I have often felt insignificant throughout my life in this world, unseen and unheard. But it seemed to me that my life, like all others, had to have meaning of some sort and that my feelings and thoughts mattered as much as any other being’s. If I was here and thinking, I mattered.

Cogito ergo sum.

Until I fell into painting I never found a way to affirm this existence, an avenue to allow my voice to be finally heard. But having found a method of expression, the question becomes: What part does ego play in this? Where is that line that separates the need for self-expression from base self-glorification?

This has always bothered me. Even though I want to express myself and want my work to hopefully affect others, this constant self-promotion puts one at least on or near this dividing line. For me, that’s an uncomfortable position. Don’t get me wrong. When it comes to my work, I certainly have the confidence of ego. It may be the only part of my world where I have supreme confidence and on many days even that is shaky.

But on days like today, when I have to talk about me, me, me, I always get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach both before and afterwards. Before because of the dread of exposing myself as a fool and afterwards from the fear that I did just that.

Oh, well. All just part of the job…

Read Full Post »

Archaeology: All We Leave Behind

Posted in Biographical, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged Archaeology, GC Myers, Layers, Painting, Recent Paintings, Strata, West End Gallery on July 23, 2014| 1 Comment »

Archaeology: All We Leave Behind

As the title suggests, there are a few paintings from my Strata and Archaeology series in the Layers show that opens Friday at the West End Gallery. The piece above, Archaeology: All We Leave Behind, is a 12″ by 24″ canvas is the latest and perhaps last entry in the Archaeology series.

I am considering retiring this series that started back in 2008 although I can’t say I won’t revisit it at some distant point in the future. It has been a series of paintings that has been among my favorites, both in painting and in delving deeper into them, as well as being important to my development as an artist. When I first started the series, it came at point when I was in need of inspiration and was questioning my future as an artist. These paintings gave me footing, a firm base to rest on while I gathered what I needed to move on.

Looking at these pieces, I am almost always surprised when I get to inspect the underground artifacts. So many of the items were painted without any forethought or afterthought so once they were done and I had moved on to the next item in the debris field, they sometimes escaped my notice of their singularity. They just became part of a larger pattern of forms and color. But going back and looking at the items later gives me little surprises that sometimes make me smile and sometimes scratch my head, wondering what the hell some not quite recognizable thing is or what I might have meant by its inclusion.

But all things must come to an end, which is actually the theme of this series. And this piece, which took over a year to complete as I worked on it a bit at a time, seems like a fitting end. And if it does end up being the last in its line, what better place to show it than where my little journey as a painter began back in 1995, the West End Gallery.

Here’s another Archaeology piece in the show, Archaeology: Formed in the Past, one from a few years back that has a favorite of mine from the minute it was completed:

Archaeology: Formed in the Past

Read Full Post »

Grant Wood Landscapes

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged American Gothic, Grant Wood, Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, Painting on May 14, 2014| 8 Comments »

I have written about Grant Wood here before. Most know him from American Gothic, the well-known painting of the somber farmer and wife and pitchfork in front of a neat farm home. But for me, I am totally enthralled by his landscapes, drawing heavy influence from the way his curvy hillocks and fields come to life within his compositions. Whenever I am feeling less than inspired all I need to do is glimpse a Grant Wood landscape and I am filled with vigor, envisioning new work of my own that draws upon the same life force and rhythm that I am seeing in his work.

I think that Wood and I share the same belief that the landscape is alive and is best represented by human curves and, looking at his work, it is easy to connect with the humanity beneath it. I’ve included some of my favorite Grant Wood landscapes here including The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere with its nocturnal blue tint in its upper reaches. It’s a bright and shining painting but you never doubt that it is a night scene. That’s one of the other lessons that I drew from Wood– that you can represent things that are counter-intuitive if you paint them with that sense of rightness in your mind that allows it to see that thing in its essence, in its true nature.

It’s almost like seeing things through the eyes of a child. Not quite but in that spirit. For such a seemingly simple concept, it’s a difficult thing to get across. Anyway, enjoy these pieces from the great Mr. Wood. I know that they have filled me with inspiration already this morning.