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Posts Tagged ‘Red Roof Series’

Back in Rhythm

Posted in Influences, Painting, Technique/History, tagged on January 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’m back to painting after a hiatus of about five weeks, one of the longest periods I’ve went without lifting a brush in the past fifteen years.  I really felt it was necessary at this point to just step back and take a pause.  Take a deep breath and let things build back up inside.

The last few days I’ve been working on a new piece that is a continuation of the Red Roof series.  It felt pretty odd, at first, to step before the easel again after such a long period.  In fact, I kept delaying it for the days before I finally started.  There was a slight fear that it would be a struggle to find anything there and it was easy to let myself be distracted by any and everything.

But I was finally there.  I had a knot in my gut and was really unsure but, as I do with the Red Roof pieces, I started with a block of color in the bottom left corner and suddenly the anxiety began to lift.  This first block started a chain of actions that began to spread, even before I painted them, across the canvas.  All the distractions receded to a point far in the distance and I was completely in the moment there in front of the easel.

Man, it felt good.  Felt right.

There are still distractions that pull time away from this feeling.  It still is going to take several days to be in full rhythm which is, as I’ve described before, a very important aspect in my process.  The rhythm I’m talking of involves total immersion in the surface, free of all distraction.  Every action is effortless and immediate.  There’s a freeing of something in the mind that allows color and form to flow easily out.

That’s still some time away but that first hour or so with the brush in hand let me know it was there to be attained.

It felt good.

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On the Blue Canal

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , , on October 21, 2009| 1 Comment »

Blue Canal Pieces- GC MyersThese are two new pieces I recently completed, both 12 ” square canvasses.  They are in the same vein as several other paintings I have completed recently and featured here on the blog.

As I’ve stated before, these pieces are for me all about shapes and forms and color, more so than about an actual depiction of place.  I want to clarify that the feeling and sense of place that is created in these pieces is important to me.  But it is something that comes about as a result of the way forms and color fall together, rather than a premeditated plan for the composition.

The canal in these pieces is very important with that bright blue counterpoint to the red of the roofs and the way it bisects the village.  I have tried using a more subtle color in the canal but that blue pop! makes each painting stand out.

I have considered keeping these pieces together as a set, which is something I have done in years past, but I probably will not this time.

I had an interesting experience with a set of 3 very small paintings that were sold 11 or 12 years ago.  They were tiny landscapes, only about an inch and a half square in size.  They were, like the paintings above, not of any specific location but like many of my landscapes, influenced by the area around my home.  There is a spot on the way to Ithaca called Connecticut Hill that has an interesting look and feel that I often think of when I’m painting.

I met the buyer of this particular set one day at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA  as I was delivering some work and we spoke about the paintings.  He told me that he loved the way they reminded him of an area near he went to college.  I asked him where he had went.  He said Cornell, in Ithaca.  I asked him where this place was he had described.

He said Connecticut Hill.

He didn’t know that I was from near there when we spoke and there was little in those tiny pieces that would make me say they were of that place.  Just the feeling…

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Final Version? WIP

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on October 6, 2009| 5 Comments »

Final Version (?) GC Myers 2009Well, here’s what I’ve come up with for the painting that I’ve been working on over the past two weeks.  I added one window, on the central structure (thanks, Brian, for the suggestion) and went with twisting bare trees on the ridge to mirror the road.  I also added a little more light in the central section.

And there it is.  So far.

There is always the possibility that over the next week or so I may change it in some small way, a highlight here or there.  Just little tweaks to fine tune the weight of the piece.  When I say weight I refer to the way I look at the painting as though it were suspended from a center point in the painting and each visual element to either side of that point added weight, causing the painting to lean to the side with more visual weight.  I try to keep the painting centered and balanced on this center point, changing the weight on each side by adding elements or enhancing those that are there to create more visual interest, by which I mean weight.

Thus far, I like this piece a lot.  It has a lot of wallop in the studio with its size, 42″ high by 60″ wide, and its masses of bright red roofs.  The feeling of the piece has evolved over the process.  I originally felt that the focus and feeling of the piece stemmed from the area where the sky met the far ridge.  But the simple addition of one tall window  brought the focus down lower to that structure and changed the complete impact of the piece, giving it a feeling of warmth beyond the warmth of the colors.  Human warmth.

So that is basically how I paint in my additive  or obsessionist style, which is quite different  that my typical pieces which are reductive, which means I add lots of paint in a liquid fashion then pull paint off the surface to reach my desired end.  I may or may not show that in the future.

So this piece will stay with me for a few more weeks in which time, when I am fully satisfied of its completion, it will  be varnished then framed.  I use an archival quality varnish with UV protection to prevent fading from normal light over the coming years.  I usually use a gloss because I like the added brilliance and depth it adds.  The frame comes from my good friend Stephen who has built my frames for about the last twelve years.  He generally uses native poplar which gives a fine grain which beautifully accepts the stain that I apply after receiving the raw frames from him.   I will talk more about framing in a later post.

The final step is applying a title to the painting.  I have a few ideas but am open to suggestions.  No contest this time although there may be another in the near future.

But for now, if you have any ideas, let me know…

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Update #3- Work In Progress

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on September 30, 2009| 6 Comments »

GC Myers 2009 Buildiing UpI’m at a point with this work in progress, a 42″ by 60″ canvas, where I have basically finished the underpainting which is the process of blocking in the composition.  The next step for me is to start building up color throughout the piece, developing more depth from all the elements.  In this case, I start by using a light application, again almost drybrush, of a yellowish paint.  for this piece I’m using a yellow oxide.

The thinly applied yellow allows me to see dimension yet still lets the darkness of the base’s black and the red of the underpainting show through.  This is something that I feel is crucial to the feeling I’m trying to achieve.  Again, I could easily go through and simply paint each structure with one pure color and save a ton of time but it would lose the effect I desire.  Besides, it gives me more time to consider each subsequent move.

Now comes some red.  I start with a few cross-strokes of a crimson in the sky then start applying some yellow strokes as well, just to start to give light the sky.  I also start to lighten the path in all parts of the painting just to give some more depth.  At this point, I’m also pondering if I should start working a bit on the waterway as it is such a large and crucial element in the lower half of the painting and it’s darkness at this point might alter how I proceed with other elements.  After some thought, I decide against working on the waterway and move on to the roofs of the structures.

GC Myers 2009 Adding the Red RoofsAgain, I use a crimson red that is a bit darker which gives me a bit of leeway so that I can lighten roofs later as I see the need.  I’m beginning to see more and more light in the piece at this point and can see areas where I want to concentrate in some of the next steps in the process.  For instance, sides of the houses that will be a sort of focal points through the piece.  I’m reminded also at this juncture of how the roofs of the village act as little pointers or arrows that move the eye upward in the picture.  I do this with other elements as well, in may of  my paintings, everything pushing the eye toward the center of the painting.  It didn’t start as a conscious effort but I became aware that I was doing this years ago and have been doing this subconsciously, albeit with an awareness,  for years.

I was a little apprehensive in showing how I paint in this style, afraid that it might take away some of the mystique of the final paintings, make it seem that  the work was a pure product of process.  But taking the time to write down how I proceed makes me realize that while there is a process it is the decisions that are made during the process that make it either work or not work.  Intuition and a constant visual weighing of elements play huge roles in this decision making, which makes each piece unique beyond the process.  These are things that I take for granted in my day to day existence in the studio, parts of the process that are below the surface and operating on a subconscious level but are perhaps the most important aspects of the process.

So, I’m on to the next step.  Stay tuned…

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Work In Progress

Posted in Painting, Technique/History, tagged , , on September 26, 2009| 7 Comments »

GC Myers 2009 Beginning PieceI started a new painting on Wednesday of this week, a 42″ high by 60″ wide canvas.  I first prepped the surface with layers of gesso and a layer of black paint.  I’m not sure if the texture of the surface will fully come through in this photo but it has an interesting surface with string-like bands running across it.

I’ve been working lately in my self-titled obsessionist style, work that is based on a dark ground with building color shapes on top.  It is the style I have used for much of my Red Roof work and is the type of work I have featured as of late in this blog.  I tend to work in surges, focusing on a certain style for an extended period, as though each piece, though self-contained and complete in itself,  is both rehearsal and an extension for the next piece.

By extension, I am referring to an extension of the thought process that forms my compositions.  For instance, I may take a concept that started in an earlier piece in the series and either expand upon it or take it in a different direction than the painting from which it stemmed, maybe in a direction that I recognized after the original had taken form.

GC Myers 2009 UnderpaintingAs I have been doing a lot of Red Roof-like work I wanted to take something that I gleaned from a few of my recent pieces and move it to a larger canvas.  I wanted a large mass of structures building upward.  So I began working in the lower corners, blocking in the forms in a red oxide paint.  As I said before I have used other colors as an underpainting before, I prefer red oxide for the way it shows through and creates a warmth and depth in the whole piece.  My eye responds to the red breaking through the overlaying colors as the piece proceeds.  It’s something that  reminds me of the  bits of a vermillion color you often see braking through other colors in Paul Gauguin’s work, something I always look for in his work.

As I start bringing the corners toward each other, I start making decisions on how it will build upward.  Everything, except for the fact that I know I want masses of structures, is up in the air at this point and my forward vision is constantly shifting.  At this point on this piece, I have a feeling that I want to insert a canal or river, elements that I have used often as of late, and a bridge connecting the two sides.  I decide to start with the bridge and let the waterway build off of that.

Covering such a large canvas with small forms is time-consuming, more so than some of my other work which consists of large color fields and requires a different form of concentration because, as I said above, the piece is always shifting as each new element is added.  It requires me to stay fully engaged which is really the basis for obsessionism as I see it.  As a result, I often am thinking about my next move on the work even when I am not at the easel or when my day is done in the studio.

So, it’s time to get back at it…

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On the Canal

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on August 24, 2009| 3 Comments »

On the CanalThis is a new piece, temporarily titled On the Canal, that I completed this weekend.  This painting is kind of an extension of my Red Roof series that I have been working on for a number of years.  This piece and a few others like it from earlier in the year are different than earlier Red Roof pieces in that the earlier pieces were more about the landscape in which  the red roofed houses appeared.  These newer paintings are more about color and form, the arrangement of both into an almost abstract form.

This is a smaller canvas, 8″ high by 24″ long, but has a bigger feel.  From it I get the sense that I will probably do a larger piece in this manner.  I think a large piece would have great visual impact and may start one soon.  I will post any progress.

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Blank Sentences

Posted in Painting, tagged , on February 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »

dsc_0343-smallIn a comment from yesterdays post (Out Into the Wide World) there was a comment from David Terrenoire  (his entertaining blog A Dark Planet can and should be reached from my links list) where he thought he liked the shown painting because there an implied narrative.

I think there is something to this comment  and I think it’s central to some of the attraction that my work may hold for some viewers.  I may have addressed this before so if this seems familiar, excuse me.  

Years ago, Cheri, my wife, described my paintings as blank sentences.  By that, she meant that I was giving context, some detail and a bit of direction but the actual narrative of the piece was left to be filled by the imagination of the viewer and the experiences that they brought with them.

I immediately sensed the truth of her words.  It also explained a few things.  My writing had always lacked narrative depth.  I was more concerned about creating mood and emotion with the words rather than the story construct.  As a result, most of my writing centered around describing silence, ephemeral moments and wide open spaces.  Pretty limited stuff and it left me feeling as though I were missing the mark somehow.

I wanted to create an environment where someone could see the things in my writing- silence, space and moment- but in a way where I was not filling in every detail.  The viewer would add an actual element to the painting.  The narrative of the piece might be implied but was only there if the viewer so wished.

Maybe I’m off-base here or maybe I’m blathering on in the artspeak that I so detest.  I just don’t know.

The piece above is a new painting tentatively titled  Above Canaltown.  This might be a good example of what I’m trying to say here.  For me, this very much about shapes, color and creating a certain emotional rhythm with the placement of the buildings, paths and canal.  However, I can see where there is room for narrative and I may have my own for this scene.  But if this piece is to succeed and have a life of its own, the sentence will be completed by someone other than me.

That okay with you, Dave?

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Out Into the Wide World

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , on February 15, 2009| 2 Comments »

Out Into the Wide WorldThis is a new painting titled Out Into the Wide World.  It’s painted in the same manner as my Red Roof series, in a style that I call  obsessionism.

This piece uses some familiar icons that appear frequently in my work.  There is the path that winds through the scene and there is the ever present red tree, this time being wind blown.  The tree is often placed on a small mound that  lifts it above the surrounding landscape, giving it a sense of importance in this context.

In this particular painting, I see the red tree as a guide or mentor, indicating here that one must follow the path that lays before them and must get past the trees in the foreground which might obstruct the view ahead. I suppose this is really about keeping one’s focus on the bigger picture and not getting caught up in the smallness and pettiness of things which might prevent one from moving on in their path to growth.

Now, this is only an interpretation made after the fact of the actual painting.  I never intend such meaning or message beforehand and am never sure what will emerge.  Generally, when a painting succeeds visually it is fairly easy to read meaning into it.  The elements that create an effective painting for me- depth, texture, contrast, mood- are the very things that create thoughtful evaluation.  For me.

For others, it may (or may not) be just a pleasant  little picture and nothing more. And that is fine and equally correct.  That is the subjectiveness and beauty of art.

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Are We There Yet?

Posted in Technique/History, tagged on February 2, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Outside the BeltwayI had a question come up yesterday, a question that has been raised before and one that I have answered more than once with much difficulty.  The interesting thing is that because of the nature of what it deals with the answer is always shifting a little.

The question came from a viewer who asked how I determine when a painting is complete.  How do I say that enough is enough and step away from the painting?

There is no clear and specific answer for this because it all depends on an intuitive sense  of rightness in the piece, something I’ve mentioned in past posts.  There are parts of the eye and brain that are constantly measuring the piece as I work it, weighing the various aspects of the elements that make up the painting.  Color and harmony of color.  Depth into the piece.  Balance in the various compositional elements.  

There must be a unique sense of being and  place, all within the bounds of logic.  My mind must not question the viability of what I see before me.  

Many of the things I’m taking in are almost intangible but a certain tipping point is inevitably reached where any more paint, any more strokes, would not add anything to the piece and may in fact take away from the painting and it’s freshness , edge and logic.

I am looking, at this point, for the piece to have it’s own life force, it’s own momentum that goes beyond what I know is my own contribution to the painting.  In other words, the whole must be greater than the sum of its parts. 

Now sometimes this feeling is misguided or plain wrong and after a time, needed additions to the piece become apparent.  Occasionally a piece will come back to the studio after touring the galleries and I will spend some time with it only to see a deficiency that had eluded my eye earlier.  It’s interesting how a small, seemingly unimportant, tweak to a piece can change it’s entire impact.  

To minimize this, I am always looking at work as I complete it, trying to determine if I have reached this desired level or rightness.

It’s an ongoing thing, one that is always shifting a bit and changing.  Like most people…

The painting above is a new piece and is called Outside the Beltway and is in the Red Roof series.  I’m spending some time with it in the studio.

 So far, it’s measuring up.

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And The Future Comes

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , on January 31, 2009| 2 Comments »

And The Future ComesThis a new smaller painting with the title  And The Future Comes, an 8″ by 16″ canvas.  It is a continuation of my Red Roof series and is, what I think, a very strong piece.

There’s a great deal of warmth in this piece and the mosaic-like quality of the sky adds depth and vibration.  There is a quiet, contemplative feel throughout the piece and while the coming light of the future seems ominous, it is also hopeful. 

This painting will be at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY  for their upcoming Little Gems show which opens February 6.  There is also a group of very small paintings that I call Redtree Thumbnails .  They are 2″ by 4″ canvasses which give them a real gem-like quality and are a great way for the beginning collector to obtain a first piece.

 If interested call Linda or Hedy at the West End at 607-936-2011. 

9909-102-redtree-thumbnail-29909-105-redtree-thumbnail-5Redtree Thumbnail #4

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