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Posts Tagged ‘Red Chair’

Comforter

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on February 1, 2011| 3 Comments »

I’ve been dabbling on this painting for the past month or so, working on it for a while then setting it aside.  Taking some time before jumping ahead, lettting time give me a better view of where I was going here.  It’s a fairly large canvas at 30″ by 30″ and features the Red Chair that is the central figure of a number of my paintings.  I consider the chair an icon-like object that has meaning (or personification) for many people beyond its obvious nature as a mere chair.  For instance, for me it often signifies memory but others see it as a seat for past family members or as a place to sit and pause on their own journey in life.  It’s a subjective meaning and there is no right or wrong here.

As significant as the chair is here, the tree equally shares the role as the central figure in this piece.  I decided to make this tree a bit of an anomaly for my work– not a red tree.  The greens are not deep or opaque in color and allow the red oxide underpainting to shine through, giving it a reddish tint and creating depth in the foliage.  The tree forms a very bold figure in the middle distance, one that relates in some way to the Red Chair in the foreground.

How does it relate?  What is this piece saying? I’m still working on this myself.  It sometimes takes me longer to translate a piece than it does for someone who first sees it for a few moments in a gallery.  I can say that this piece has a very comforting feel for me.  Their is a warmth in the colors and the composition seems to  cradle the eye as it progresses into the picture along the rolling path.  The sky has a brightness and the darkness at its edges is not overly foreboding.  While there is a contemplative feel to the chair, it is not anxious but, rather, tranquil.  As I said, comforting.

I am still taking this painting in and this reading will evolve over time.  But for now, I’m happy to have it in sight to feel its calming effect.

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Hierarchy

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on May 20, 2010| 2 Comments »

Hierarchy ---GC Myers

The name I’ve chosen for my exhibition that opens June 11 at the Principle Gallery is Facets.  When looking at this year’s show, I realized that there was a very wide variety of my work in this group.  Not focusing on one specific aspect as in previous years.  There are  a few Red Roof paintings, a few fragmented sky paintings , a few with converging field rows, a few with Red Chairs and a couple of  my small, lone figures.  It’s overall a pretty interesting group that I think shows a fuller spectrum from the prism of my work.  Thus, the name, Facets.

There are also a handful of my Archaeology pieces in this show.  I only do a handful of these per year now.  The piece above, Hierarchy,  is derived from that series although it focuses more on the layers below the surface rather than artifacts, although there is one yellow shoe there.  This painting is a  30″ by 40″ canvas so it has some size which gives it some visual wallop. 

I’ve been working on this piece for about six months, doing a bit then setting  it aside.  I would keep glimpsing at it when I wasn’t working on it, trying to figure where I would go with it.  But I never wanted to rush it, never wanted to push it too hard.  Wanted it to grow naturally, organically.  It wasn’t until yesterday, when I dragged the last few strokes on the canvas, that I felt I finally saw where the painting had settled and it felt whole.

That’s always an interesting feeling, this sense of the work being suddenly complete.  Full.  Alive.  As though the last few embellishments stir something that make it more than mere paint smeared on canvas, make it an entity with a history and a future all its own.   It’s exhilarating  but sad at the same time, as though the life it’s taken on will soon be gone from my life.  I can’t fully explain it but that’s the feeling I felt yesterday with Hierarchy. 

So, I share my studio for the next few weeks with this breathing, living creature as it impatiently waits to shows its true self to the outside world…

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Red Chairs in the Trees

Posted in Influences, Technique/History, tagged on October 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »

       During every show I inevitably get a number of questions about the meaning of the Red Chair especially when it’s suspended in a tree.  For anyone interested, I will pass along how the chair came to be aloft.

Growing up, we lived in the country in a large isolated house with an old barn across the road.  One summer when I was 8 or 9,  I came across a dead woodchuck laying next to the barn.  As the summer progressed and he dried out, a vine passed through his body and by summer’s end was suspended a few feet in the air.  To the eyes of a 8 year old this was something magical.  I was struck by the power of the earth to reclaim its creatures.  Everything seemed very ephemeral after that…

The idea of a tree growing through an object such as a chair, which is very representative of human existence, is a continuation of that early fascination.  It wasn’t until I had painted several pieces with the hanging chair that I began to also see the symbolism of the empty chair, which in some cultures represents the recently deceased.  That is what I see now– the family members who have passed on.  Again, this is my interpretation of this work.  I enjoy hearing what other people see in the work because many times it’s completely different from what I see but just as valid.  I often look at some pieces in a whole new light after hearing a new view.

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