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Posts Tagged ‘Part of the Pattern’

Principle Gallery Show Opens Tonight!

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on June 3, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers 2016 Principle Gallery CardWell, it’s all out of my hands and hanging in the gallery now.  I’m talking about my show of new work, Part of the Pattern,  opening tonight at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

There are always some jitters and a little uneasiness for me at these openings even when I feel strongly about the work, as I do with this show.   But time has taught me that so long as I know that I have put full effort into my work things will work out.  And I know that’s the case with this show.

Please come out to the gallery tonight for the opening.  I will be glad to talk with you about the work and answer any question you might have.  Just don’t ask me about particle physics– I can’t help you there.

Part of the Pattern opens tonight at the Principle Gallery with a reception (open to all, of course!) that runs from 6:30 until 9:00 PM.

Hope to see you there.

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ONLY A FEW DAYS REMAIN TO REACH OUT TO NEPAL

AND

GET A CHANCE TO WIN THIS PAINTING!

“Enraptured” is a 30″ by 40″ Painting valued at $5000

Event ends Monday June 6 at 12 Noon ET

For more information go to:  ARTISTS ENGAGING NEPAL

https://www.crowdrise.com/artists-engaging-nepal

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Part of the Pattern

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on June 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Part of the Pattern Paintings 2016GIFPart of the Pattern , which opens tomorrow, June 3, is my 17th solo show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.  It’s been a great run since that first show back in 2000 that introduced the Red Tree into my body of work.  I’m not even sure that I had a body of work at that point.

But through the years this annual show has given me the desire as well as a platform to continuously move my work forward.  It has often reflected my own small steps forward as I sought to find answers in my own life.  This desire  to discover how I fit into this world has been a driving force in my life and the work I have produced over the last 17 years, producing small incremental steps forward  in both.

I don’t know that I will ever reach a point where I will be totally satisfied on either front.

But through this time I have come to believe that the world we know is but a small part of the larger whole, that there are forces and energies that swirl around us without our knowledge of them.  They move in seemingly chaotic ways that occasionally reveal a glimpse of their underlying patterns to us who are fortunate to be looking at that moment.

What it is, what it means, how we fit in—I don’t have any answers.  But just catching that glimpse convinces me that there is a place for us, for me, in that pattern.  Every being, every life, including my own small and seemingly inconsequential life, is included in that pattern and somehow fills a need  by playing its role.

I think a lot of the work from this show reflects this belief that the forces and powers that seem far removed from us are actually within reach.  They affect us and we affect them.

You know, this is a really hard thing to express in words without sounding like I’m dancing on the outer fringes.  Maybe that’s why I work in color, lines and shapes.  I hope you’ll stop in at the Principle Gallery and take a look at this show.

Maybe you will see what I mean.

Part of the Pattern is now on view at the Principle Gallery at 208 King Street in Alexandria, VA.  The show opens Friday, June 3, with an opening reception that runs from 6:30 to 9:00 PM.  Hope to see you there.

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ONLY A FEW DAYS REMAIN TO REACH OUT TO NEPAL

AND

GET A CHANCE TO WIN THIS PAINTING!

“Enraptured” is a 30″ by 40″ Painting valued at $5000

Event ends Monday June 6 at 12 Noon ET

For more information go to:  ARTISTS ENGAGING NEPAL

https://www.crowdrise.com/artists-engaging-nepal

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Archaeology: The Golden Age Beyond

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on June 1, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Archaeology- The Golden Age Beyond smThe past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories…Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration.

-Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form – Six Lessons

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This is a new Archaeology painting that is included in Part of the Pattern, my solo show at the Principle Gallery which opens Friday,  June 3.  It is titled Archaeology: The Golden Age Beyond and is an 18″ by 24″ canvas.  It is the first new true Archaeology piece that I’ve done in several years and this piece really seems to connect with the original group of this work for me in its narrative element and dramatic effect.

I absolutely love the thought that the great composer Igor Stravinsky shares above.  It seems to fit so well with what I was thinking when I was working on this particular Archaeology painting.  Each bit of detritus seems separate and unconnected with the next yet my mind was always trying to see what the hidden connection between them might be or how they came together in a larger narrative.

It’s that interesting area between what is fact and what is its truth.  We may determine fact but we can’t always know context and connection.  An item may not hold the same meaning in every circumstance.

But we can imagine and create a narrative that seems to make sense of fact and, in many cases, may come close to the reality.

Perhaps archaeology is as much an art form as it is a science.  Or an artist is sometimes a sort of archaeologist.

Hmm, let me think about that.

Anyway, I hope you’ll come out to the Principle Gallery on Friday evening.  The opening reception begins at 6:30 PM at the Alexandria gallery on historic King Street. I look forward to seeing you there.

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ONLY A FEW DAYS REMAIN TO GET IN ON YOUR CHANCE TO WIN THIS PAINTING!

“Enraptured” is a 30″ by 40″ Painting valued at $5000

https://www.crowdrise.com/artists-engaging-nepal

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Winds of Hope

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , on May 31, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Winds of Hope smA great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.

—Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia

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This is another painting from my show at the Principle Gallery, Part of the Pattern, which opens this Friday, June 3, at their Old Town Alexandria location on historic King Street.  This piece is a 20″ by 24″ canvas that I call Winds of Hope.

The words above from Catherine the Great jibe well with the meaning that I take from this painting.  For me, the patterned winds symbolize the constantly changing nature of the world.  The world is never static and change is inevitable and beyond our ability to control it.  How we see this change and react to it is the only thing that we control.

For some, any change is scary and filled with imagined terrors.  They try to hold tight to a past that has long since spun away and can never return in the same form.  Their world is filled with their own fears and each new gust takes them further from that idealized past.

I guess that the winds of change would give these people a headache.

Others just ride the currents without any thought, barely if at all noticing that change is all around them.  Maybe they are the fortunate ones, these people who live with their eyes only on that which is directly in front of them, never seeing the pattern of change in the sky above them.  They only notice it when it hinders them.

Then there are those who realize that the winds cannot be controlled, that they will blow where they please.  The change they bring comes without a thought as to how is affects us.  These are the ones who try to find the positive aspect of this change, who attempt to spark their imagination to see hope in this new future.

They see hope in the winds of change.

Is that a naive way of seeing things?

Maybe.  Probably.

But I prefer the naivete of hope over the cynicism, fear and careless ignorance of the other views.

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Only 6 Days Left!

Speaking of hope, PLEASE help the Soarway Foundation in their efforts in Nepal

and possibly WIN the painting of mine shown below.

Your help is truly needed…

https://www.crowdrise.com/artists-engaging-nepal

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Cleansed

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , on May 25, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Cleansed smThis is another piece from my upcoming June show at the Principle Gallery.  It is titled Cleansed and is 18″ by 18″ on canvas.  The final look of this painting really pleases me with its clarity and pop.  It really makes the eye jump to it in the studio.

During the past few days as I’ve been doing final preparations for the show, I have found myself seeking this piece out just to look at it for a few stolen moments.  There’s something very soothing in a placid kind of way for me in this painting, despite the brightness of the color that seems to almost be shouting from the canvas.  Maybe it’s shouting, “Relax!”

Cleansed Layout and Underpainting 2016This was an interesting piece.  I initially laid out the composition in red oxide and began to lay color into the rays in the sky.  At that point it felt like the overall color of it was going to go into the blues. A nocturnal scene perhaps.  But that didn’t quite ring true for me so I didn’t go forward with it.  So for the last couple of months this piece has been sitting in the state shown here at the left, behind me as I work at the easel.  Whenever I would turn around, it was there staring me in the face.

Finally, in the last week, I decided that it had to be done.  It still felt like a night scene but I decided to go against that intuition.  I had been working on a couple of pieces with brighter colors in the days before this and decided to continue in that vein here.  At first, I regretted it but it quickly took on the glow that I see in it.

I’m glad I went this way even though I think the other way would have brought a really strong image.  I think I needed it this way more than the other way.

And sometimes that’s what painting does for me– it gives me what I need at certain times.

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REMINDER:  ENGAGE NEPAL AND WIN!

Just a reminder that you can help the Soarway Foundation in its efforts to help the people of Nepal in their struggle to recover form last year’s earthquakes.  Your donation of $25 and above gives you an entry into a drawing for  my painting, Enraptured, a 30″ by 40″ canvas valued at $5000, as well as a signed commemorative poster from the Soarway Foundation.

In relative terms, your odds are pretty good so reach out  and give a helping hand and maybe you can win this painting.

This event ends in less than two weeks, on June 6, 2016.  So please act now.  If you can’t, please share this or tell a friend or two–every little bit helps.

You can go to the contest site by clicking here or clicking on the painting or poster below:

Soarway Poster -Engage Nepal GC Myers- Enraptured sm a

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“Part of the Pattern” Preview

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , on May 23, 2016| 2 Comments »

American Art Colector June 2016 coverThere’s a nice preview of my upcoming Principle Gallery show, Part of the Pattern, in the new June issue of American Art Collector.  It’s always nice to see your work in the context of a national magazine, especially when the images show well and the article is well written.

And I think that is the case with this particular article.  When I was interviewed by the editor I wasn’t so sure that this would be the case.  In a telephone interview with limited time, it is sometimes hard to know if you’ve coherently made your point or if you’ve just made yourself sounds kind of nutty.  When I hung up the phone on this interview I wasn’t really sure in which camp I fell.

But it reads well, with a reference to an Erwin Schrödinger quote that sticks with me– The task is…not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees– which for me is about trying to take what could be mundane scenes and imbuing them with sensed meaning and emotion.

There is also a nice quote from a couple, Deidre and Jim, who have collected my work for the past fifteen years.  They do not consider themselves “art people” and came to my work through a chance encounter with a painting in the window of the Principle Gallery those many years ago.  They speak about how that one moment, that one look, has made a difference in their lives in those fifteen years.

The fact that Jim and Deidre don’t consider themselves “art people” very much pleases me.  That means that the work affected them in a way that took them out of their normal pattern, made them see something beyond what they normally were seeing.  That goes back to the words of  Schrödinger and is the hope of any artist.

So, if you see the magazine please check out the article.  And if you’re in the Alexandria area on the evening of June 3, stop in at the Principle Gallery for the opening of the show.

2016 June American Art Collector GC Myers article

 

 

 

 

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In the Inner Place

Posted in Influences, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 17, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- In the Inner PlaceShakespeare 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

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I think that the words above that Joseph Campbell spoke during his conversation with Bill Moyers for  The Power of Myth speak beautifully for both 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, many myths and much in art may not speak to us on this personal level.  I certainly don’t expect my work to speak to everyone no matter how much I may wish that it could.  It simply can’t.  My work is a reflection of my journey, my limited knowledge and my flawed self.  Yours is completely different.  But occasionally, there is a moment when you will see something of yourself in my representation of my inner world and that to me is magical.

This new painting, an 8″ by 24″ canvas, is what I see as being a very personal piece that might well reflect for others.  I call it In the Inner Place and it is included in my upcoming show, Part of the Pattern, at the Principle Gallery which opens June 3.  Without being specific, I see many things in this painting that I think speak strongly to how I want to see my world and my place in it.

An inner perception.

You might simply see it as a pleasant piece.

Or not.

Or you may see it as something reflective of your own inner world, something that speaks to who you are.  I can’t say.  We can’t control what anyone sees in a mirror.

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Highest Ground

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on May 12, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Highest GroundI’m so glad that he let me try it again
‘Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I’m so glad that I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin’
Till I reach my highest ground

— Stevie Wonder, Higher Ground

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Another new painting headed for my show, Part of the Pattern, which opens June 3 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.  This piece is 8″ by 14″ on paper and is titled Highest Ground, borrowed from the chorus of the great Stevie Wonder song.

This is an easy piece to absorb at first take with its mix of deep warm and cool colors and simplified composition.  But despite that, there’s a lot of going on in this piece. It both feels soothing as though it represents a sort of safe haven but it raises questions.  If this is a safe haven, what is it safe from? Is this an end of the world scenario?  There’s a boat but nobody seems to be present– where are they?

And the ladder is a new element here.  I see it as a symbol of a continual upward climb toward some sort of final personal fulfillment.  A spiritual endpoint.  As the song says– gonna keep on tryin’/ Till I reach my highest ground.

 Here’s Stevie Wonder’s song to help me along as I continue to look at this piece for a while.

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In the Waiting

Posted in Painting, Poetry, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on May 2, 2016| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- In the Waiting sm… I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

-T.S. Eliot, East Coker, The Four Quartets

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I’ve been in a deep groove lately as I ready work for my upcoming June show, Part of the Pattern, at the Principle Gallery.  Part of finding this groove was returning in the last month or so to process of  transparent inkiness that marked the early incarnations of my work.  An example of this is the piece shown above, a 6″ by 24″ painting on paper that I am calling In the Waiting, taken from the Eliot lines above.

The strength of this wet work, at least for me, is in the way the fluidity of the paint creates the tension and contrast that carries the emotional content of the painting. The duskiness where light and dark comes together is filled with the anticipation of all that is to come, all unknown to the waiting Red Tree who attempts to tamp down its desire to imagine what is coming.

The goal is to put aside any faith or hope or love –as Eliot puts it so beautifully– and simply await the inevitability of what is to come without thought. But that stillness of thought makes the waiting tolerable and allows us to view that which is before without the influence of our desire, to see things as they really are.

But as we all know, that is easier said than done…

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Peaceful Abode

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on April 27, 2016| 6 Comments »

GC Myers- Peaceful Abode

-Isaiah 32:18

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This new painting, a 24″ by 18″ canvas, is titled Peaceful Abode.  and is part of my upcoming June show, Part of the Pattern, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

This piece has a bit of a different look even though it falls easily into my body of work. Maybe it’s the slight change in coloration or the slightly altered perspective from the rise of the hillside behind the lakefront buildings.

I don’t really know and, to tell the truth, I don’t want to think too much about it for fear of over-analyzing it.  I’ve enjoyed looking at this piece for the last week or so and find that it has a peaceful quality in it that is very soothing.

It takes me to a place far away from the rancor of politics, the horrors of violence we inflict on one another and the general chaos of our time.  It is the antithesis of nearly everything I see on the cable news networks.

The whole perspective of this piece seems to be inward looking, seeking that quiet and placid spot.  And looking at this piece, I believe for a brief moment that I have found it.

And that’s a good thing…

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