Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Recent Painting’

Of Infinite Worth

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on April 8, 2014| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Of Infinite WorthEvery situation– nay, every moment– is of infinite worth, for it is the representative of a whole eternity.

— Goethe, 1823

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

These words from Goethe give me pause.  I have often thought that each moment, even those multitudes of moments which we seem to throw away like so much trash, has some unique quality that we may not recognize or understand in that moment.

Filled with possibility of discovery and wonder.  Perhaps it is the revelation of a whole eternity captured and represented in that moment, as Goethe suggests.

I suppose the trick then is to give each moment, each situation, the proper reverence and joy it deserves.  A deeper understanding and sense of purpose is offered in return.

Of course, this is the goal.  There will be many moments thrown away, disposed in negative emotions and behaviors.  But if we just try to be aware of the weight of each moment at some point in each day, perhaps it will become habit.  Part of our make-up.

And that’s what I see in this painting, 7″ by 10″ on paper, that I am calling Of Infinite Worth, appropriating the title from Goethe’s quote.  We move on a path that winds forward, taking us  in and out of view of the horizon. Eventually, it brings us to a higher elevation, above distraction, that offers us a clear view of what is ahead.  Perhaps it is a moment filled with eternity or simply a moment to carry with us as we continue ahead.

I could blather on a little more here but I think I should stop and let the image speak for itself.  After all,  everyone might not be looking for eternity this morning.

Read Full Post »

Proclamation

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on April 2, 2014| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Proclamation By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.

—Katherine Mansfield

October, 1922, Her final journal entry

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

I came across this final journal entry from the writer Katherine Mansfield, who died much too early from tuberculosis at age 35, and thought how much her words fit what I was thinking about this newer painting shown above.  I call this 30″ by 40″ painting Proclamation and the thought and feeling it may be proclaiming might very well be the same as those expressed by Mansfield.

It is a painting that speaks of coming to an understanding of one’s self and stepping forward in the light to show that true identity.  It is at once flawed and beautiful.  Flawed by the scars of attained wisdom and change.  Beautiful because it is honest and real, open to the elements and all who look upon it.  It has become, to use Mansfield’s term, a child of the sun.

I think it would be too easy to say too much here.

Let it be at that.  A child of the sun.

Read Full Post »

Shambhala

Posted in Influences, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on March 3, 2014| 4 Comments »

GC Myers Shambhala smAccording to Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is name given to what they consider the Pure Land, a utopia of sorts whose reality is as much spiritual as it is physical.  A place where everyone achieves a state of enlightenment and peace and tranquility.  Author James Hilton morphed the name into Shangri-La for his novel Lost Horizon which describes a group of Westerners who find themselves the guests in a small idyllic nation of this name tucked away in a protected Himalayan valley.

Whatever you call it, the idea of a place of enlightenment and peace seems pretty attractive to me these days, given the many events going on in the world being driven forward by such negative factors as greed, hate and fear.  That tranquil inner place is what I see in this new painting, an 18″ by 36″ canvas that carries this name, Shambhala.  The road , for me, represents the search that leads to this elusive state and the sun  a blissful guide with a warm lure that radiates throughout the sky.  The Red Tree is on a small peninsula set into a calm body of water, still attached to the world  but in an ethereal space.  It is in a state of being where it is firmly in the moment, having set aside the past and disregarding the future.  Just absorbing the now.

That’s what I see and that is what I imagine how that moment might feel but I am still on that path, looking ahead for a sight of that hopeful destination.

Read Full Post »

Memory Way

Posted in Influences, Personal Mythology, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on February 4, 2014| 4 Comments »

GC Myers-Memory Way smEvery man’s memory is his private literature.

-Aldous Huxley

***********

As I have stated in the past here, the Red Chair, an icon that often appears in my work, is a symbol to me of people and places and experiences from the past.  In short, my memory.  In this new piece, Memory Way, that is most certainly the case.  This little painting, 2″ by 5″ on paper, is another of my pieces from the Little Gems exhibit which opens Friday at the West End Gallery.

The road here represents to me the continuum of time.  The landscape is almost idyllic, perhaps representing my tendency to block out the worst parts of memory.  At least, to downplay them and keep them in the background and to put what good there was there in the best possible light.  I like to revisit the past occasionally and I have to make it a place where I am comfortable.  A past filled with nothing but dark and fear-filled memories is no place to venture on a regular basis.

Anyway, this little piece makes me happy and fills my mind with a feeling of good memories.  As Huxley said  above, our memory is our own private literature, filled with the memories of our lives and the lives of our ancestors.  I sometimes edit, embellish and redact my life’s literature, all to make it an interesting read for myself.

That’s what I see in this little guy.

Read Full Post »

Steps to Solitude

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on January 29, 2014| 7 Comments »

GC Myers- Steps to Solitude smMaybe I decided to use this image  because it was -8° when I headed out for my stroll through the woods to the studio.  Well, not really a stroll.  More like a hard determined march, trying to cut through the sharp cold as quickly as possible.  But as I glimpsed at the still dark sky,  Venus  was shining brightly just above the treeline, so much so that it caused me stop and just wonder at its brilliance.  To my eye it had a reddish glint that made it seem  like some exotic little gem in the sky.  Beautiful enough to stop me in my frozen tracks.

This brought to mind the upcoming  Little Gems show at the West End Gallery in Corning that opens next Friday,  February 7th.   I am currently prepping a group of paintings for this exhibit of small work which is always one of my favorite shows of my painting year and one that always brings back good memories.  As I have noted here in the past, the Little Gems show in 1995 was the first opportunity I had to show my work in public.

A first step on a then unknown path.

This will be my twentieth Little Gems show, something which would have seemed unfathomable back at that first show.  I don’t paint as many small pieces in recent years, spending more time on larger work, so this is always a great time to revisit the small form.  There is something  wonderful in seeing the colors and forms compressed into a smaller space, something that brings out the gem-like quality in each.  Each element, each mark takes on greater weight in the smaller form.  There’s a different type of concentration, one that is  quicker in its self-editing and one that is definitely more intuitive.  The sizes are such that everything just happens quicker and there is less time to ponder.

And that is often a good thing.   I’ve often said that I’m not smart enough to paint when I have to think about it.   Maybe these small pieces are  proof  of this.

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

This piece is called Steps to Solitude and is a compact 3″ by 6″ painting on paper.  It will be at the West End by the end of this week along with several other small pieces.

Read Full Post »

The Song We Carry

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , , on July 17, 2013| 4 Comments »

GCMyers 2013- The Song We Carry smWe all carry a lot of baggage with us on our journey through this life.  It’s a rare moment when we find ourselves free from all the  traces from the past that we lug along– all the snippets of conversations, faces, song melodies and lyrics, pictures, smells, film clips and everything else we have input into the hard drive of our mind is always whirring around.  I know that I will sometimes pull up some fragment from the past and wonder how I was still holding on to this piece of information.  It might be the name of someone that I barely knew forty or fifty years before.  Somehow it hangs on and occasionally pops out, confounding me with the idea that this seemingly useless bit of data is taking up space that could be occupied by truly meaningful information.

Like old Popeye cartoons. ( The one with Olive Oyl singing  What We All Need is Brotherly Love runs on a loop in my head)

Or the year that Humphrey Bogart died.(1957)

Or the name of the book that influenced the original Superman comic. ( It was Philip Wylie‘s Gladiator— an interesting read, by the way.)

But somehow,  despite and because of all this detritus, we  emerge in some individual form.

A single distilled version of everything that we take in.

A single voice.  One song.

I guess that is how I would characterize the thought behind the painting at the top, The Song We Carry.  It’s 7″ by 11″  on paper and is going to the West End Gallery for my upcoming show.

Now here’s a little Popeye along with Wilco.  It’s a video for Wilco’s  Dawned on Me from last year and it features the first hand-drawn Popeye cartoon in over 30 years.  I can’t remember if Olive Oyl danced like this in my memory but now I will.  The data has been entered.

 

Read Full Post »

Viva!

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on July 9, 2012| 4 Comments »

I call this new painting Viva!   It’s a 24″ by 24″ canvas that is part of my upcoming exhibition, In Rhythm, which opens on July 20  at the West End Gallery in Corning.  In Spanish, Viva! is Long Live! or simply Live!  Both definitions fit this piece well, especially when used in exclamation.  This is a piece that exclaims.

Not a piece for the timid.

It has a glowing presence in the studio as though it is alive, the vibrant reds and oranges seeming to have their own pulse.  There is a great intensity in the colors here, a quality that can sometimes get out of hand quickly.  But the harmony between the color intensities in this piece really holds it together and gives it a placid quality that belies the strength and heat of the colors.

The way I see this painting is that the Red Tree is reaching upward from its perch, connecting with the energy contained in that  sky, as though there is source of power, both physical and spiritual at once, swirling overhead.  It has a feeling of the joy in simply being alive in the now, as though  this single moment contains all eternity- past, present and future.  A celebration.  Fiesta.

Viva!

Read Full Post »

Weighing It

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on February 21, 2012| 4 Comments »

Left Side detail

In my last post, I wrote about how I was going over the large canvas on which I am currently at work, weighing the different elements against one another as I try to create balance in the composition.  It’s a large canvas, 54″ by 84″,  and there is so much more space to oversee, making sure that one area doesn’t so dominate the whole.  In a large horizontal landscape composition, if the one side is overly dominant, making the other seem weak or dull, the entire piece suffers  no matter how wonderful the strong area may be. 

  The right side with the heaviest grouping of houses  was very strong in the overall composition and I found my eyes always settling on the right side of the canvas.  There just wasn’t enough boldness in the sections to the left of center to counter the weight of the houses.  I wasn’t about to add more houses or elements so I decided to turn my attention to heightening the colors and contrasts on the left side, strengthening it so that it came closer to the right in weight.  I spent a day just going back in with colors that brightened the area and brought more attention to it.

Right Side detail

I decided to better see the strength of the different areas I would break up the canvas into sections on my computer. This would let me see their strengths without the influence of the surrounding areas and evaluate them as individual compositions.  The right side  (shown to the right here) was bright and strong with the houses just dominating the area.  But after making the changes on the left side ( the image above) I found that it had tremendous strength of its own and was equal in strength to the right, at least in my eyes.  The strength of the left side, for me, was in the weight created by the harmony of the colors and the elements.  In fact, looking at the left side detail above, I think that it could stand easily as a  really strong piece on its own.

 
Satisfied with this progress, I can now start to evaluate other parts of the painting and make the final touches that will hopefully pull it all together.

Read Full Post »

Coming Closer

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , on February 16, 2012| 6 Comments »

I’ve been documenting the progress  that has been made over the past two weeks on a large canvas on which I’ve been been working.  It’s been a roller coaster of emotion for me as I’ve been working on the 54″ high by 84″ wide painting.  Sometimes I am completely satisfied, thrilled with what is unfurling before me, and at other times I am worried that it may not pop in the way I envisioned in earlier stages.  At the moment, I am closer to happy as the piece has started to come into full sight.

After beginning to bring more light to the sky, I have started adding color to the lake that dominates the center of this piece.  As I do so, I can better see tweaks that need to be made in some of the colors of the landscape around it.  Nothing big but small adjustments that bring it closer to completion. 

After coming to the still dark blue color as shown above, I decided that I wanted the color to be more dominant and added a light teal that really emboldened the whole composition.  I have to better photograph this so there is a bit of glare on the image below.  I also noticed that the sun is showing a bit harsher here, less warm than it actually is.  But this gives you an idea of what is there at the moment.

This painting pretty much dominates everything in the studio at the moment.  It’s big in size and visual impact and my eyes immediately fix on it.  There is still a ways to go but it’s coming closer to being the internal landscape that I envision.

 

Read Full Post »

Greater Visibility

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on May 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

This is a painting, a 24 ” by 36″ canvas,  that I thought was completed a few months back.  I say thought because I felt at that time that it was exactly where I thought it should be.  But there was something about it that kept me from putting it up on this site over the time since.  I kept looking at it and had very conflicting emotions about it.  On one hand, it stood up on its own and had its own momentum and fullness.  It seemed okay.  But on the other hand, there were parts of the painting that seemed a bit too dark and became distracting because there was a flatness in the darkness of the color.  It just created  a nagging doubt in my mind.

Finally, I knew I had to address those doubts and grudgingly put it back on the easel.  I inserted a lot more lightness into this piece,  focusing mainly on the lower third of the painting.  The blue of the foreground really pops now and the lowest blocks of green in the fields of the foreground emerge from darkness.  The changes created a greater sense of depth in the piece which really opens up the whole painting, bringing more  clarity to it.

Time allowed me to see something different in this painting, something beyond my intitial response to the color and composition.  It may have been complete before but now it feels as though that fullness is more visible for all to see.   Now there isn’t a doubt captured in a  darkness that makes me take my focus from what the painting is trying to say.  This lightness and clarity allows the painting to fully convey itself now.  And I think that makes this a better piece.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »