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Posts Tagged ‘Red Tree’

Ascending Bird

Posted in History, Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 15, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Ascending BirdI’ve been looking for a title for this new painting, an 18″ by 18″ canvas, for a week or so now.  A lot of things come to mind and I thought I had it for a while.  Then I was listening to some music and one of the songs just hit me.

It was Ascending Bird, a traditional Persian folk melody, played by the Silk Road Ensemble which is a large and loosely knit group ofmusicians, including the great Yo-Yo Ma, who hail from along that fabled route and play many of the traditional instruments. The Silk Road was the network of  ancient routes that traders used in linking the East and West over the centuries, from China through the Middle East to the Mediterranean. Both goods and ideas moved along the Silk Road.

This song is the Persian version of the Phoenix myth, of a bird who flies higher and higher toward the sun until it is engulfed in flames.  It then rises from the ashes as a new creature.

And that’s kind of how I see this painting.  The paths moving from dark to light signify a transformative journey and the Red Tree appears as a Phoenix-like figure emerging from a hillock bursting from a treed hillside.  The Red Tree almost seems to ready to take flight.  I see it as a moment of realization and redefinition.

Here is the Silk Road Ensemble with Y0-Yo Ma performing Ascending Bird.  The version here is a shorter one but has the dynamic punch that struck me.  You can hear a longer version here. Give a listen and have a great Sunday.

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Deconstructed

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Painting, tagged , , , , , on May 13, 2016| 3 Comments »

Jigsaw Planet- Early Riser GC MyersI was going through some older posts from this blog when I came across a couple that featured some of my paintings on the website Jigsaw Planet.  It’s a site that allows viewers to either choose from a large group of puzzles or to upload their own images and create jigsaw puzzles that they can assemble on their screens.  It’s an interesting diversion.

For me, the interest comes in seeing my colors and forms deconstructed, getting to see them in singular bits that allow me to examine their texture and depth away from their normal surroundings.  I am sometimes surprised, mostly pleasantly so, by what I see.  And, despite having an advantage in knowing these painting intimately, I still struggle at some points in putting them back together– mainly because I find myself just examining the individual pieces for an extended period of time

So this morning I went to a page on the Jigsaw Planet site from a regular reader of this blog who goes by the moniker TheWOL ( and who also writes a blog called The Owl Undergound) and has posted a number of my paintings there.  There were a couple of new paintings that are featured in my upcoming June show at the Principle Gallery so I thought I’d share one with you today.  It’s Early Riser which you can see in full at the bottom and in partial reconstruction above.

If you want to try your hand at figuring out the puzzle of this painting or any of the others TheWOL has posted, click here.

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Highest Ground

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on May 12, 2016| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Highest GroundI’m so glad that he let me try it again
‘Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I’m so glad that I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin’
Till I reach my highest ground

— Stevie Wonder, Higher Ground

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Another new painting headed for my show, Part of the Pattern, which opens June 3 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.  This piece is 8″ by 14″ on paper and is titled Highest Ground, borrowed from the chorus of the great Stevie Wonder song.

This is an easy piece to absorb at first take with its mix of deep warm and cool colors and simplified composition.  But despite that, there’s a lot of going on in this piece. It both feels soothing as though it represents a sort of safe haven but it raises questions.  If this is a safe haven, what is it safe from? Is this an end of the world scenario?  There’s a boat but nobody seems to be present– where are they?

And the ladder is a new element here.  I see it as a symbol of a continual upward climb toward some sort of final personal fulfillment.  A spiritual endpoint.  As the song says– gonna keep on tryin’/ Till I reach my highest ground.

 Here’s Stevie Wonder’s song to help me along as I continue to look at this piece for a while.

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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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In the Waiting

Posted in Painting, Poetry, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on May 2, 2016| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- In the Waiting sm… I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

-T.S. Eliot, East Coker, The Four Quartets

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I’ve been in a deep groove lately as I ready work for my upcoming June show, Part of the Pattern, at the Principle Gallery.  Part of finding this groove was returning in the last month or so to process of  transparent inkiness that marked the early incarnations of my work.  An example of this is the piece shown above, a 6″ by 24″ painting on paper that I am calling In the Waiting, taken from the Eliot lines above.

The strength of this wet work, at least for me, is in the way the fluidity of the paint creates the tension and contrast that carries the emotional content of the painting. The duskiness where light and dark comes together is filled with the anticipation of all that is to come, all unknown to the waiting Red Tree who attempts to tamp down its desire to imagine what is coming.

The goal is to put aside any faith or hope or love –as Eliot puts it so beautifully– and simply await the inevitability of what is to come without thought. But that stillness of thought makes the waiting tolerable and allows us to view that which is before without the influence of our desire, to see things as they really are.

But as we all know, that is easier said than done…

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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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In the Dreamlight

Posted in Biographical, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on March 29, 2016| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- In the DreamlightI’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.

—Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

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This is another new painting that is slated for my annual show, Part of the Pattern, at the Principle Gallery which opens June 3.  I call this piece, a 36″ by 12″ canvas, In the Dreamlight.  It has, at least to my eye, a contrasting feeling of vague dreaminess along with one of ultra-clarity.  Kind of like the feeling of those dreams that I have had that linger with me for years afterward.

I think we may have all had those dreams, those visions that reveal some mystery and spark some sort of inner questioning.  I still vividly remember several dreams from my childhood and, much like Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights character Catherine’s words shown above, they have altered the color of my mind.

Often, I find myself flashing back to those dreams, rerunning and experiencing once again portions of them in my present mind.  They are often enigmatic and filled with a mystery that begs to be answered.  And my mind believes they are answerable if I look long and hard enough.

In some ways I believe that is the purpose of my work– to somehow uncover the answers to these dreamed questions.  If the dreams are symbolic, might not the answer be found in a like symbolism?

As it is with all so  many things, I don’t know the answer.  But this painting reminds me of that feeling, that sense of being so near to the center of the mystery yet never quite being able to truly know the answer.

But maybe if I look once more, I will see what I’m seeking…

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Land of Heart’s Desire

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on March 25, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC MyersFaeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame. 
― W.B. Yeats, The Land of Heart’s Desire

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I was going to write more about this new 18″ by 18″ canvas but after coming across the verse above from the first performed play from the great Irish poet/playwright William Butler Yeats, I thought I’d let those words speak for it alone.  I see these four lines in this painting and that’s good enough for me at the moment…

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String Theory/ Redux

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, tagged , , , , on March 24, 2016| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- String TheoryThis painting is an orphan, one of those few pieces that ended up back with me here in the studio after making the rounds of the galleries.  I don’t mind that it came back as it has always held a special place in my heart– orphans have that effect on me.  I like the roughness of its surface, the deepness of the colors in the sky (which are so hard to capture with my photography) and the contrast of the scene’s quietness against the turbulence of the sky’s energy.

It now hangs in a seldom used hallway here in the studio so I don’t see it as often as I would like.  But when I do wander down that hall I often stop and take it in and it inevitably makes me both smile and think.   It has a very tactile nature with a strong texture that makes me run my hands over it, almost as though I am trying to reach into that swirling mass of energy to connect with some hidden dimension.

Here’s what I wrote about this painting several years back.  It a redux of a redux, in a way, as it references yet another earlier post, one back in 2009:

I call this new painting String Theory. It’s a 20″ by 40″ canvas that is simple in design but has great depth of color and a strong underlying texture that gives it added dimensions. It’s a striking piece in the studio, especially given its larger size, with its saturated tones and the thick spiral bands that run through it catching glints of light at different angles.

The Red Tree’s crown is painted as a monolithic form and seems to glow with life amid the contrasting darkness of the sky. I chose a deep red for the color of the fields in the foreground because I wanted it to represent the earth as a physical dimension, the red symbolizing the blood of the living. The swirling blues and greens of the sky, to me, represent a different dimension, one less tangible and more ethereal.

As for the title and the thought behind it, I described this in a blogpost from July of 2009. I think I will let the words from that post describe what I see here as well:

The title of this painting comes from the way the sky is formed from many patches of color and the way the light is formed therein. It reminded me of one of the supposed byproducts of the string theory which is a very speculative area of quantum physics. Without going into the scientific basis for the theory ( which I really couldn’t do very well anyway), string theory basically creates a platform where extra dimensions could and may exist alongside the dimensions that we know and dwell within, without our knowledge of their existence. A simplified example of how this might work is the way we are surrounded by radio signals all the time without our knowledge but with the proper receptor, a radio, they become apparent. With string theory, perhaps there are also parallel dimensions around us without our knowledge, dimensions that contain others forms of energy, other forms of existence.

People have used this as theoretical basis for many things such as time travel, the existence of UFOs, and things supernatural such as ghosts and other spectral occurrences. The string theory has been a very fertile field for science fiction writers to work.

Perhaps it also provides a place where the soul, the source of energy that animates the body, ultimately dwells. Perhaps there is the energy of souls all around us in these alternative dimensions. Maybe the photons we see are also the part, a facet, of something unseen. That’s how I see the sky in this painting, as masses of disparate energies that we only see partially in the dimensions we can detect.

Okay, remember that it is early in the morning when I’m writing this. I’m not smart enough to really discuss quantum physics. I am not familiar with all the New Age-y spiritualism. I’m just saying there is some form of energy out there in the light we see. What it is, I surely don’t know. In this painting I like to see it as light and energy of souls.

And that makes me feel good…

It made me feel good then and does now as well.

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First Flame

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on March 21, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- First FlameLight thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

—Terry Pratchett

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Last week, I featured a painting called Early Riser and spoke a bit about being just that– an early riser.  This is another new piece in that same vein, a 30″ by 30″ canvas that deals with the Red Tree greeting the first light of morning as it sweeps away the darkness of night.  I call this painting First Flame.

I’ve been thinking about this relationship with light, about the need to not waste the light of the day.  It reminds me of the rarity of light in this universe and how much darkness there is throughout its vastness, punctuated by the light of distant stars.

Light means life in this universe, so far as we know.  Everything we depend on for our continued survival is itself dependent on light and perhaps we ourselves are comprised of  and animated by light.

We are beings of light.

And perhaps there is a type reverence shown here in this painting with that knowledge at hand.

Looking now at this painting after writing these words, I can see many things in it which confirm this interpretation.  The cemetery in the shadow of the church, for example– an implication of death being devoid of light.  The orchard at the bottom right that waits for the feeding light of the sunlight. And the fruit stands that are dark and closed.

So long as the sun rises each morning, life goes on– for us as a group and for personally for myself.

To use my all-time favorite Kurt Vonnegut-ism: So it goes…

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