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Posts Tagged ‘Quote’

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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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!

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The Bridging

Posted in Advice, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on May 19, 2016| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- The Bridging

We want to be sure that it has that drama to it, that vividness to it, that focus, that cleanliness to it that is going to say something to you.

—Thomas Keller

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The words above from chef Thomas Keller, owner of the fabled French Laundry restaurant  in Napa Valley, were in reference to food but I couldn’t help thinking that it was good advice for artists as well.

As an artist, you want your work to have a sense of drama that compels the viewer (or listener or reader or whoever it is that is taking in your work) to pause and ponder the work.  This sense of drama tells the viewer that there is something beyond the surface if they only take the time to fully appreciate it.

The vividness is in the uniqueness of it, how quickly it reaches out with its essence and reaches its intended audience.  I think of this as the work being a sort of beacon that is calling out.  Sometime, I will go in a gallery or museum and there are things on the wall that just call out to me from a great distance away.  It can be in the color or contrast or composition– something that just grabs my eye.

Focus is in the sense that all of the elements in the work come together in a harmony that pushes the central theme through.  I think there is a lot of work that is quite well done but never fully comes together in a single message that comes through to the audience.  I’m sure you’ve experienced work that you know is well done but just doesn’t seem to have much to say to you.  It kind of leaves you cold.  Focus, I believe, brings the work to life.

And there’s cleanliness.  I don’t think Keller was speaking about the cleanliness of a sanitized kitchen in his quote.  I think he was referring to the execution of the work– in his case food– so that all the elements of it sparkle and there is no distraction from what it is meant to be.  There are no unnecessary flavors or embellishments.  All excess has been pared away and there is a lightness and brightness to it.

Taken all together these qualities make for a delicious dish.  But it doesn’t happen with every effort.  There are days when finding one of these is difficult.  Then there are days when they just emerge, seemingly without effort.

The example I’m putting forward that I think fulfills Keller’s requirements — you might not agree– is the painting at the top, a 10″ by 30″ canvas called The Bridging that is part of my show at the Principle Gallery, opening in a couple of weeks on June 3.

It was the first piece I looked at after reading Keller’s words and it just seemed to have that beacon effect on me.  It was vivid and focused in it’s communication and there was a sense of drama to it.  Plus, there was a sharpness in its look and finish that just made it very appetizing.  ‘

If this were food, I would gladly eat it.

As I said, you might disagree.  Our tastes in food and art may differ.

And that is just as it should be…

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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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Prismatic Moment

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on May 10, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Prismatic Moment smThe soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

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When I was in the early stages of this piece, I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of it.  It just seemed too much.  Too much color.  Too much vibrancy.

But as I tweaked here and there, deepening some colors and inserting lighter segments, it seemed to coalesce into something that needed that vibrancy in order to express whatever it held within.  As the final marks were made and it was finished, that initial uncertainty was wiped away.  That thing that I had saw earlier as its weakness had become its strength.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at this piece over the last week or so and there’s something about it  that keeps drawing me back to it.  Maybe it is simply the colors  or the meditative stillness between the Red Tree and the Moon.  I don’t know for sure.

I call this piece, which is a 12″ by 24″ canvas, Prismatic Moment.  I have spoke before of us all being prismatic beings, filled with many colors, dimensions and sides but seldom showing but only a few of these things to any other person.  I see this painting as being one of those rare moments when one is fully expressed, when one is seen for exactly who and what they truly are.

I don’t know if we have many of those moments in our lives.  I think they may be rare but I could be wrong.  Do we ever fully see another person for all their colors and sides?  And do we ever truly show all our own colors and sides?  This piece makes me consider that thought…

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Quote of the Week: Van Gogh

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on April 26, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Vincent Van Gogh Wheat Field in Rain 1889If you work diligently… without saying to yourself beforehand, ‘I want to make this or that,’ if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before.

-Vincent Van Gogh

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I really just wanted to show these two Van Gogh paintings that feature the falling rain as part of the overall composition.  I recently have been particularly interested in seeking out  lesser known Van Gogh paintings.  There is something quite exciting about these more obscure pieces, something that fills in the blanks between the better known work.

But beyond that, the sentiment above from Van Gogh really resonates with me.  Sometimes it seems as though those paintings which you aim at with all your greatest effort fall flat while on those days when you have little idea of where the work will go, something special emerges quite unexpectedly.

It is those days and those painting that you crave as an artist.  Oh, it is gratifying to create work that you feel is well within your body of work.  That is to say, work which follows a path you have trod upon many times before.  But to have those days and those pieces that surprise you– well, that is beyond gratification.  It has an almost religious aspect,  like a confirmation of one’s belief in something greater.

But those days are often rare and come without a hint of what may emerge.  Even sitting here now, I don’t know if today will be one of those days.  But just knowing that it is possible makes me anvious to get at it.

Enjoy the Van Goghs and I am going to move into my day.

Vincent Van Gogh-Landscape at Auvers in the Rain 1890

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Contact

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on April 19, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Contact smThe morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears to hear it.

—Henry David Thoreau

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This new painting is 24″ by 30″ on canvas and is titled Contact.  The words from Thoreau above speak pretty clearly to what I see in this piece,  that we often ignore the beauty and wonder of the natural world that exists all around us.  How many of us take the time to actually look at the sway of the trees in the breeze or the pattern of the stars in the night sky?  Sadly, we’re more likely now to see these things on our phones or laptops.

We’re too  busy, too distracted to have much interaction or contact with the wonder of the world that is often within our reach.

The buildings here seem closed in and eyeless, almost as though they are turned away from and oblivious to the world beyond their narrow line of sight.  They are symbolically in the shadow of the hillside, rising in a pyramid-ish form toward the open fields and woods that open to the radiating sky.  The sun has a warm and eye-like presence and the Red Tree seems to have reached a sort of tranquil communion with it.

Contact.

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Evolution

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , on April 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- EvolutionProgress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral
with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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I was going through some older posts and came across this quote from Goethe.  I immediately looked over at this new painting, a 12″ by 12″ canvas, that I had been working on yesterday.  Something in it spoke to me from this quote, something that made me look at this piece differently.

It’s one of those pieces that don’t emerge smoothly from the hand or head.  Everything about bringing some of these pieces to life seems tortured and messy.  Pure struggle with nothing coming easy.  The paint doesn’t seem right and the message seems unclear.  Every move is tentative and probing, hoping that one stroke will send it down an easier path to completion.

Sometimes that happens.  A touch here and there and suddenly it takes to flight like a young bird discovering what its wings can do for the first time. Pure joy in the newly found grace and rhythm.

But sometimes it doesn’t happen and that same bird that you think should fly flutters to the ground, unsteady and unsure.  Not ready yet to take off.

At the end of the day, I felt as though this bird was somewhere in between.

But seeing these words changed my view of it.  To me, its struggle was its narrative, its story.  It is a representation of its own evolution, its own struggle to find its own form.  The sky has that rhythm of progress and retrogression and the relationship between the chair and the bare tree is a representation of an evolution of a kind.

I am still taking it in, still looking at it but am no longer focusing on the struggle of its creation.  It now has a meaning that moved past that.

I think I will call it Evolution.

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Door to Bliss

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on April 11, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Door to BlissFollow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.
–Joseph Campbell

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I call this new painting, which is 24″high  by 8″ wide on canvas, Door to Bliss.  The title refers to the well worn quote from the late mythologist Joseph Campbell, shown above, that advises us that if we work at that thing that we truly love, it will find a way to provide for us.

It will find the door that moves you forward and will open it once you have fully worked your way to it.

And from personal experience, I can attest to the truth behind the words.

I was going to write a whole spiel about setting goals and allowing and trusting your subconscious mind to make the decisions that will ultimately lead you to those doors.  But I think that simple quote and the painting itself say enough without me muddying the waters.

I often use tree trunks in the foreground of either side of my paintings to act as a sort of stage curtain which further highlights the central figure.  These trees also can be viewed as door frame through which the viewer is invited to pass.  That’s how I saw these two trunks in this piece– as points that must be worked to and passed by before entering that desired location, that place of bliss.

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Wyeth on Inspiration

Posted in Influences, Motivation, Quote, Video, tagged , , , , on April 7, 2016| 3 Comments »

Andrew Wyeth- Night Sleeper 1979

Andrew Wyeth- Night Sleeper 1979

I dream a lot. I do more painting when I’m not painting. It’s in the subconscious.

–Andrew Wyeth

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Andrew Wyeth- Trodden Weed

I love this short quote from the great Andrew Wyeth.  That second sentence speaks to how I view my own  relationship with what I do– I do more painting when I’m not painting.  The mind is always clicked on, seemingly always seeking that something, that one inside thing that is crying out to be expressed.

It’s a built-in thing, one that can hardly ever be turned off.  You would think it would be a maddening quality but it has become a normal way of functioning and I would probably panic if I found my mind not churning in some way.

Sometimes it is in the form of day-dreaming, just letting the imagination run free.  Other times it takes place in the words or sounds or images of others. Like pulling a new thread from an existing fabric.

Inspiration comes in many different forms and the mind is always looking for them.

Here’s a neat short film from artist/filmmaker Andrew Zuckerman that shows Wyeth describing how he sometimes find inspiration.

Andrew Wyeth from Andrew Zuckerman Studio on Vimeo.

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