Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Quote’

The Restless Edge

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on March 22, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.

—Richard P. Feynman
***********************

We live always on the edge of certainty and uncertainty.

We know what we know and that sometimes seems like an unending body of knowledge. But we also know that there is much that we don’t know and perhaps will never know. And that seems even more vast and overwhelming.

There is so much we wish to know so that we can put our uncertainty to rest. So we strive, we seek, we explore, and we observe, always searching for the next answer, the one that will bring it all together.

But the next answer poses new questions and opens new frontiers of discovery. We gain knowledge but our certainty is shaken.

But the only thing we know to do is to continue onward, forever seeking certainty.

That’s what I see in this new painting, a 20″ by 44″ canvas that I am calling The Restless Edge.  For me, the thought behind this piece is about living in a world that straddles that line between certainty and uncertainty.  Between truth and untruth. Between belief and non-belief. Between wisdom and ignorance.

About living in and coming to terms that allow you to find moments of peace on that restless edge.

And that’s what I see here.  You may not see it and that is as it should be.

One man’s uncertainty is another’s belief. Or something like that…

Read Full Post »

Balance (Known/Unknown)

Posted in Motivation, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on March 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Balance (Known/Unknown)We have to balance the lineality of the known universe with the nonlineality of the unknown universe.

—Carlos Castaneda
******************

I am calling this new painting Balance (Known/Unknown).  It is a 14″ by 32″ canvas and will have a slightly different edge detail that I will shown at a later date.

The Carlos Castaneda quote above just reached out to me when I was looking at this piece. The Red Tree here seems to be standing at the edge of the known, the terrestrial world that is defined here with earthy color, solid forms, and dark lines– the lineal universe.  Beyond it the non-lineal universe beckons, represented by a nebulous sky and a sun that acts as an unblinking eye.

It all is very much a metaphor for the purpose of art and that is to act as an intermediary between the known and the unknown, the go-between for that which is of our five senses and those things that go  far beyond those senses.

Things that we feel in an emotional sense.

And that is what art often does, putting the deep feeling of that which we cannot see onto those things that we do see.  It makes the intangible tangible.

That said, I like this new piece and have been enjoying my time with it. Every day I find a new angle within it that gives me pause, that excites me, and sets me thinking. And that is all I hope for in my work.

Read Full Post »

Willingly Off Balance/ WIP Replay

Posted in Quote, Technique/History, Work In Progress, tagged , , , , on February 28, 2017| 2 Comments »

I thought I’d share a post from several years back where I showed a painting at several stages in its progress.  It was finally titled Game of Life and remains a favorite of mine.  Below is the blog entry that was based on the beginning of he process.  At the bottom are several photos that show it in progress.

gc-myers-feb-2013-1

This is a new piece that I started over the weekend.  It’s a fairly large canvas, 24″ by 48″, gessoed and blackened before I began to lay out the composition in the red oxide that I favor for the underpainting. I went into this painting  with only one idea, that it have a mass of houses on  a small hilltop. That is where I began making marks, building a small group of blocky structures in a soft pyramid. A little hilltop village. From there, it went off on its own, moving down the hill until a river emerged from the black. An hour or two later and the river is the end of a chain of lakes with a bridge crossing it. We’ll see where and what it is when  it finally settles.

I like this part of the process, this laying out of the composition. It’s all about potential and problem-solving, keeping everything, all the elements that are introduced, in rhythm and in balance. One mark on the canvas changes the possibility for the next. Sometimes that possibility is limited by that mark, that brush of paint. There is only one thing that can be done next. But sometimes it opens up windows of potential that seemed hidden before that brushstroke hit the surface. It’s like that infinitesimal moment before the bat hits the pinata and all that is inside it is only potential. That brushstroke is the bat sometimes and when it strikes the canvas, you never know what will burst from the rich interior of the pinata, which which is the surface of the canvas here. You hope the treats fall your way.

One of the things I thought about as I painted was the idea of keeping everything in balance. Balancing color and rhythm and compositional weight, among many other things, so that in the end something coherent and cohesive emerges. It’s how I view the process of my painting. Over the years, keeping this balance becomes easier, like any action that is practiced with such great regularity. So much so that we totally avoid problems and when we begin to encounter one, we always tend to go with the tried and true, those ways of doing things that are safest and most predictable in their results.

It’s actually a great and safe way to live. But as a painter who came to it as a form of seeking, it’s the beginning of the end. And as I painted, I realized that many of my biggest jumps as an artist came because I had allowed myself at times to be knocked off balance. It’s when you’re off balance that the creativity of your problem-solving skills are pushed and innovation occurs.

It brings to mind a quote from Helen Frankenthaler that I used in a blogpost called Change and Breakthrough from a few years back:  “There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about. ”  

 You must be willing to go outside your comfort zone, be willing to crash and burn. Without this willingness to fail, the work becomes stagnant and lifeless, all the excitement taken from the process. And it’s that excitement  in the studio that I often speak of  that keeps me going, that keeps the work alive and vitalized.

It’s a simple thing but sometimes, after years of doing this, it slips your mind and the simple act of reminding yourself of the importance of willingly going off balance is all you need to rekindle the fire.

This is a lot to ponder at 5:30 in the morning. We’ll see what this brings in the near future.  Stay tuned…

gc-myers-feb-2013gc-myers-feb-2013-wip gc-myers-feb-2013-2wip gc-myers-game-of-life-small

Read Full Post »

Canyon of Doubts

Posted in Motivation, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on February 21, 2017| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Canyon of DoubtsCreativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.

–Eric Maisel

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

This new painting, 8″ by 10″ on panel, is called Canyon of Doubts. For me, it represents the navigation that takes place in the creative process as the artist tries to get past the formidable obstacles of self doubt.  Doubt often throws up barriers that has the artist asking if they are good enough, if they have the talent, training, and drive to create true art that speaks for them to the world. Doubt makes them fear that they are out of place, that they don’t belong, that every other artist has more right to create than them.

Doubt keeps the artist seemingly boxed in with no apparent way forward.

__

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

–Kahlil Gibran

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

I’ve been trapped in that canyon many times. I’ve thought many times that there was no way out, that the fears posed by my doubts were the realities of who and what I was.

I have always felt alone with my doubts.  Words of encouragement from others often felt hollow when I was lost in those canyons.  They didn’t know how steep the walls of doubts seemed to me or how inadequate, how ill-prepared I felt in that moment.

The only option that seemed available to me was to trust that I could somehow fight my way out of those daunting canyons. It would mean mustering every bit of talent, every ounce of energy, and a sustained belief that I deserved to have my voice rise from out of  those canyons. It was matter of  either having the faith in my own value as human to find my way free or withering away in a canyon of doubts.

__

Your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

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

I still find myself in those canyons. I still find myself periodically looking up at the walls that surround me and wonder if I am talented enough, strong enough, or even entitled to escape them.

But I now know that there is a path through them, one that is well worn with my own footprints from my past journeys in that shadowed place.  I know that, even though it is lonely and seemingly unbearable in that moment, I don’t have to be trapped in that place of doubt.

I’ve traveled this path and there is indeed a way out.

It takes time and effort and devotion.  It takes the belief in yourself, forged from past experience, that you will make the right decisions and not be trapped in those walls.  It’s in having the faith that when take a wrong turn, when you make a mistake, that you will recognize it and get quickly back to the path that sets you free.

At the moment, I may well be in that canyon still but I have the moon guiding me and its light shows me where the canyon ends.

And then I will be free once more.

__

Read Full Post »

A Little Kandinsky

Posted in Favorite Things, Quote, Video, tagged , , on February 18, 2017| 2 Comments »

kandinskyLend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and… stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

–Wassily Kandinsky

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

Just wanted to share a great little film from Alfred Imageworks that features an animation of the elements from some of Kandinsky’s great paintings. Below that is a film from 1926 of Kandinsky creating a drawing with these same elements.

STEREOSCOPIC FOR EXHIBITION – KANDINSKY from Alfred Imageworks on Vimeo.

Read Full Post »

The Eye of Imagining

Posted in Motivation, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on February 16, 2017| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- The Eye of ImaginingAll human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!

—Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

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

It converts to actual.

Those four words sum up the power and potential of the imagination.

Our dreams, our hopes, our desires– they all take place in our imaginations. There these concepts begin to take shape and create their own paths forward. It is in the imagination that those first tenuous steps take place that transform mere thought into reality.

Every worthwhile thing we have ever done and every aspiration we will ever have is a product of the imagination.

It is the seat of all humanly power. And it is ours if only we use it.

Dare to imagine.

I think that is what I am seeing in this new painting, an 18″ by 18″ canvas, that I call The Eye of Imagining. It’s about dreaming.  About transforming that which we know and see into a form that better suits our hopes and desires.

It’s about reminding ourselves that the only limits to our potential come from not dreaming, in not allowing our imaginations to run freely.

This throttling down of one’s imagination is something of which I am as guilty as anyone.  I often find myself compromising my dreams, making them smaller and less challenging because of self doubt and a lack of confidence.

And this lack of imagining makes me feel smaller as a person.

We need to dream.

We must dare to be the person we imagine ourselves to be. Dare to imagine that.

Read Full Post »

A Place to Stand/ A Replay

Posted in Current Events, Motivation, Quote, tagged , , , on February 13, 2017| Leave a Comment »

The post below, from early 2012, is a favorite of mine.  The idea that each individual has their own unique strength and quality–their own lever, if you will– is what I see as the basis for my work. This post also serves as a reminder that there is never an obstacle too large or a foe too powerful that can’t be moved with the proper lever. I think it’s something we should think about during this time.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.

– Archimedes

^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is actually a condensed and long accepted version of  Archimedes‘  words.  It was really about the power of lever in physics.  He actually said: Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand  and I will move the Earth.  But the lever has been dropped over the 2200 or so  years since he lived and has come to signify something more than a statement about physical mechanics.  It is an almost existential statement about the power of the individual in changing the world.  The small somehow defeating  the overwhelming forces set against them.

David versus Goliath.

The biblical David’s lever was his intelligence and the sling and stone that he used to offset the lever of the Philistine’s size and strength in order to take down the giant.  Every underdog has somehow identified a strategic advantage that has enabled them to triumph against all odds.  Something that plays to their own strengths and magnifies their greater opponent’s weaknesses.

What is the lever you will use to move the Earth?

I call the painting above A Place to Stand after these words of Archimedes.  It is a new piece that is a 24″ by 30″ canvas that is a very simple composition that relies on the juxtaposition of the single Red Tree set against a powerfully set sky that seems ready to overwhelm the diminuative tree.  Yet, against all the elemental force  of wind and weather that  the sky can muster, the tree perseveres.  It uses the flexibility of its trunk and limbs to absorb the wind and its bark protects it against the heat and cold.

It stands alone, without protection for all the world to see. Yet it stands. Just standing where you are with resolve is sometimes a lever powerful enough to change the world.

Perseverance is often its own victory.

Persevere.

Read Full Post »

Maintaining Hope

Posted in Current Events, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on January 25, 2017| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Keeping HopeTo be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

——Howard Zinn

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

It’s easy in these times to let ourselves fall prey to our darker emotions.  From both sides of the political spectrum, we revert to anger and hatred, letting those emotions color our view of our every day lives.  These dark emotions begin to crowd in on our lives, preventing us from witnessing the good that exists even during troubled times.

Our better qualities should not be swayed by external forces.  True compassion and empathy is not subject to politics or prejudices.

But, as I said, it’s easy to fall prey to the darkness, to simmer in a stew of anger and fear.  God knows, I have.

But I can’t live that way. I won’t live that way.

I need the joy.  I need to smile and laugh. I need to feel quiet in my inner world. I need to feel the beauty of our humanity.

Anger takes those things from me and I will not have that.

Don’t get me wrong.  This is not a submission to the events currently taking place.  No, my anger remains.  My will to resist and fight against those things that I see as simply wrong remains as strong as ever.

I just refuse to let darkness take over my life, to change who I am– or who I aspire to be– as a person.

And that, in its own way, is a small  victory.

**********

The piece at the top is a new piece, a small 2″ by 6″ painting on paper called “Maintaining Hope.” It is part of the upcoming Little Gems show,  opening February 3 at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Hard Freedom

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on January 18, 2017| 7 Comments »

GC Myers- Real FreedomI am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

—Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966

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

How do you define freedom?

It’s a word that’s thrown around and owned by groups of every political persuasion and we as a people like to sing out the claim that we are the land of the free.  But what is it?

Is it simply the freedom to speak our opinions or move freely?  Or is it a freedom to live in a manner that we choose?

It’s a hard and multi-faceted question.  Probably more than I should be biting off here since, to start with, I don’t know that I can even define the reality of the word.  I mean, is it even a real thing or merely an accepted illusion, something that sounds pretty good in theory but never really becomes real?

At the end of the day, I do think that any definition we give is based on our own personal preferences, our own need to rationalize our life choices and still feel pretty good after all is said and done.  We choose our freedom.

There’s a lot more to be said about this subject.  In fact, I’ve written many more paragraphs that won’t show up here today just because I couldn’t decide which direction to take my thoughts. But I wanted to at least broach the subject to talk about it in the context of the new painting at the top of this page, a 12″ by 12″ canvas that I call Hard Freedom.

In this piece, I see freedom as a hard choice, one that requires a willingness to step away from group thought and definition. It is built on hard decisions to reject anything that wants to impinge on the sovereignty of your freedom.  As a result, it can be an isolating thing, one that requires constant vigilance to insure the protection of that freedom.  In this freedom, the price that is paid is in being ultimately responsible for every decision made.

Real freedom has very few safety nets and can be a scary thing.  I am sure a lot of you seeing this island might think of it not as a place of freedom but more like a prison.

And that’s okay.  My freedom is most likely not the same as your freedom.

As I said, this subject has a lot of places to take us and maybe in the days ahead we can search these places.  For this morning, I will leave you with these scrambled half-thoughts along with the painting at the top and the words of Robert Heinlein.

And a question: What does your freedom look like?

Read Full Post »

The Intention

Posted in Influences, Motivation, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on December 15, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- The IntentionEvery intention sets energy into motion, whether you are conscious of it or not.

–Gary Zukav

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

I am calling this new painting, a small 5″ by 7″ panel, The Intention.  It is based somewhat on the quote above from Gary Zukav although the thought behind it, that we must first identify that thing that we seek in order to find it, is one that I have believed for quite some time.

I have long thought that once we identify our true need or desire that the energy of the universe reacts to that intention and sets a course for us to that destination which satisfies our want.  We begin to move in ways, sometimes subconscious and almost imperceptible, that lead us forward to that goal.  Small decisions end up having large consequences and we creep ever closer even though we may not be fully aware of our progress.

However, that end is not always reached nor is it always attainable.  Sometimes along the way we may reset our sights, realizing that we weren’t as earnest in our desire as we first believed.  The required effort may be more than we are willing to give or the results we are getting don’t produce the satisfaction we thought they might.

Or we might simply not be equipped to complete the journey.  We may just not have the ability, talent or temperament to reach our dreamed of goals.  But in that case we normally, while discovering what we cannot do, have uncovered some things that we can.

In finding what we are not, we sometimes uncover what we truly are.  And the universe takes note anew and leads us to that.

And that all starts with that initial intention which in turn becomes purpose.

I like to think that this piece reflects this idea, that the Red Tree here is sending out its plea to the universe and it is responding by setting energies in motion.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »