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Posts Tagged ‘Red Tree’

I’m Coming Home

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Painting, tagged , , , , , on March 13, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- In the Window- Worlds Beckon smLast week, we watched the HBO documentary  Mavis! which is, of course, about the career of singer Mavis Staple.  Ever since I have been going to YouTube to listen to her early gospel work with her family, the Staple Singers, in the 1950’s.  It’s just great stuff, a little gritty and blues-edged beneath with her vocals soaring above it all.  It seemed so ahead of the time, especially given what was being played on pop radio at that point.

I thought for this Sunday morning music I would keep this simple and play one of my favorites, I’m Coming Home from 1959.  I think it’s a great example of what they were doing then.

I picked the painting above for this song.The painting at the top is from my In the Window series from back in 2005 and is titled In the Window: Worlds Beckon.  I chose it for this post because it reminded me of the thought of going home in the way of this song, that there is another world beyond this one.  We may exist in this room, this life,  now but there’s a whole different one just outside the window.  That’s how this painting always struck me and it jibes with the song, at least for me.

Anyway, enjoy and have a great Sunday.

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Early Riser

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on March 10, 2016| 6 Comments »

GC Myers- Early RiserThe early morning has gold in its mouth.

—Benjamin Franklin

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I am an early riser.

I guess that I’m here in the studio at 5:30 in the morning is a testament to that fact.  It’s always been that way for me even as a child.  The prospect of what the new day might bring has always been exciting enough to rouse me in the early morning.  On those days when I have a less than thrilling or an even dreaded task before me, the thought of getting started on that task so that it will just get done and out of the way does the same.

At times in my life when I worked the  overnight third shift at other jobs, the idea of going to bed when the day was breaking seemed awful and the day always felt already spent  when I eventually woke up only a few hours later, as though all possibility was drained from it while I slept.  I could never get used to that.

As an early riser, you get used to seeing the day unfold and the light changing as the sun rises.  Each morning is teeming with the potential of the new.  Even when things aren’t going well, there seems to be the possibility that this next new day will bring that change that alters one’s course in a better way.

I think that’s what I see in this new painting, a 24″ by 30″ canvas that I am calling Early Riser, of course.  The sun and its rays seem new and different but filled with a potency of possibility for the eagerly waiting Red Tree.  Meanwhile, the neighboring community slumbers, not witnessing the breaking wonder that is the new day.

This was  a difficult painting.  By that I mean it took several attempts to achieve a sky that served what I felt as I laid out the initial underpainting or bones of the piece.  Twice I got quite a ways into the sky, spending many hours each time, before painting it over and restarting.  They were patterned skies but never captured a rhythm that synced with my own emotions in the piece.  As soon as I set out the first rays of this last attempt, it felt right for this painting and everything fell into place.

And early this morning, I feel this captures my eagerness to greet the day.  Now, I have to go– there are things to be done.

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Steeple

Posted in Poetry, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on March 7, 2016| 4 Comments »

GC Myers-- SteepleI have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.

—Arthur Rimbaud

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I was looking for a title for this new painting which is a 24″ by 12″ canvas.  I was seeing joy and exhilaration in it as well as the Red Tree being at the pinnacle or highest point.  Looking at a list of synonyms for the word pinnacle, I spotted the word steeple.  At first I thought it a bit odd, thinking of a steeple only in the context of a church’s architecture.

But then I realized that a steeple is built to be the highest point, reaching upward toward the heavens.  I began to think of the many times I had painted my Red Tree on sharp sided mounds that attempted to push it further upward, above the surrounding earth.  Was that mound not a steeple of some sort? Were not many of these paintings ultimately about reaching out to unknown forces as well as seeking inner peace?

Looking at this painting, I began to see it clearly as a steeple.  A steeple for a place of joy.  I guess that’s why the line from poet Arthur Rimbaud at the top fit so well,  Though most of the poetry from his very short career is dark and brooding in its imagery, I found the image put forth in this line bright and joyous.  It is  filled with the energy of self-realization, of the awareness of one’s connection to the cosmos.

Perhaps those swirls in the sky are ropes waiting to be stretched from this steeple to the next…

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Into the Pattern

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on February 26, 2016| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Into the PatternMy latest works have been focusing on the use of pattern within my landscapes.  Well, I guess you could call it pattern.  There is often a motif of shape and sometimes a direction of movement but for the most part it is fairly chaotic and seemingly without order.  Maybe that is what art is –trying to see pattern within chaos, trying to impose some sense of order so that we might better understand what we are seeing.

And maybe it is our reaction to seeing an emerging pattern that defines what we consider as beautiful.  I am sure many of you have once seen an image that struck you immediately and remained in your mind even if it was only seen in a glimpse.  I know I have.  I am often mystified as to why this occurs.  My only explanation is that its form and pattern somehow jibe with some innate sense of form and pattern, something inborn and with us since the beginning of our time as a species.

Perhaps even the patterns of those things of which we are made.  Maybe the pattern is us.

And that could be expressed through religion.  Or spirituality.  Or physics. Or art…

That being said, this new painting is an 18″ by 36″ canvas that I am calling Into the Pattern.  For me, it represents what I have written above– that we are  part of the pattern  and the pattern is part of who we are.  The Red Tree here is understanding of this and begins to meld into the strong pattern of motion seen in the sky, as expressed by the leaves coming from its limbs.

This is a pretty simple image but it has a nice tension between chaotic motion and calm stillness of understanding.  At one point, I had painted in a figure near the tree.  For me, it absolutely destroyed the impact of the whole piece, distracting focus from what the painting was trying to send out.  The figure just plain bothered me and it didn’t take much thought for me to decide to paint it over.

It was amazing how this changed the painting and my perception of it.  Now, it is one of those pieces that I look at quite often throughout the day here in the studio, pondering what it is saying to me and trying to decide if we are part of the pattern or if it is part of us.  Or both…

 

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Sustenance

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on February 18, 2016| 8 Comments »

GC Myers- SustenancePainting is the pattern of one’s own nervous system being projected on canvas.

—Francis Bacon

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I am still in the midst of processing this new painting for myself, trying to determine what it is saying to me.  For now, I am calling this 16″ by 20″ canvas Sustenance.  There is something about the pattern of the sky filled with rays containing smaller strokes that remind me of surging atoms.  Maybe it’s my own nervous system being projected as Bacon says above or maybe it is an energy that feeds everything.  The ubiquitous energy  that transforms into vibrant, richly colored life.

I am still not sure.

You might notice that this is not a Red Tree.  Yes, this is the rare Green Tree.  Coming to the end  of this painting, I decided on green as a contrast to the reds and oranges I had used for the land around the tree.  It just felt right from a design standpoint and I think it works here.

It has emerged better than I had originally thought it might when I was working on it.  But, as I said, I am still taking this in. There are a lot of things in this simple painting that speak to me but I still can’t exactly put them into words.

And I kind of like that it doesn’t have an obvious read for me, that it leaves me without words.  So, I will stop now and just try to figure out what those words are…

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In Delight

Posted in Favorite Things, Motivation, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on February 8, 2016| 2 Comments »

GC Myers= In DelightThere is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.

—Walter Savage Landor

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The British poet, Walter Savage Landor, who wrote those words above knew what he was talking about: Sometimes you do something that is filled with pleasure for yourself yet it might not stir the soul of a single other person.  The delight comes in simply doing it.

Not that Landor, who lived from 1775 to 1864,  was without accolades.  He had an incredibly long career–almost 70 years— and was held in the highest esteem by his peers. But he never gained widespread public popularity or love for his work in his life or after.

His poetry was his singing and sometimes only he and perhaps a few others could appreciate that voice.

I chose these words from Landor for this painting not only because I felt that he was writing about his own work in a way.  I used it because of the great pleasure I took in painting the painting above, an 18″ by 18″ canvas that I am fittingly calling In Delight.  It was one of those paintings that gave me a lot of joy at every step of its growth, each stroke making it come more and more to life for me.

It’s that fulfillment of joy that makes me not worry about how it is received.  If not a single person sees a thing in it, I do not care.  It pleased me to simply make it and even now it makes me smile when I look at it from my chair in the studio.

For me, I felt like I was singing with a rich and full voice.  But again, that’s just my ear.  You might hear fingernails on a chalkboard when you look at it.  And that’s okay– the delight was in the singing.

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A Strange & Special Air/ Redux

Posted in Painting, Quote, tagged , , , on January 27, 2016| 2 Comments »

This quote from Leonard Bernstein came back to mind when I recently  ran across this post from several years back.  It’s a big part of what I do and seeing it again serves as a reminder that feeling that sense of place is vital in achieving work that I feel has life in it.  Off the top of my head, I can’t recall where this painting finally found a home but I am hoping it is serving its caretaker as well as it served this post which I am reposting today.
GC Myers - A Strange and Special Air 2011“Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world – the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.”

—Leonard Bernstein

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I came across this quote from Leonard Bernstein that I really thought captured what I hope occurs in my work.  I think that my work is most successful when people allow themselves to feel themselves as part of the landscape before them, to enter and breathe in that strange and special air, as Bernstein describes it.  I know that this is the case for myself.  I have written about this here before, about how these landscapes, with their blue and orange fields and bright red trees, feel as real to me as looking out my studio window.  The fact of the blue in the field is overruled by its harmony within the composition which creates that sense of rightness to which I often refer.

Maybe this sense of rightness is what makes up that strange and special air.  I don’t know. I only know that I still seek words or explanations to describe why a painting works, by which I mean has an emotional impact on the viewer.  The new painting above is such a piece for me. It’s a 15″ by 25″ image on paper that I am calling, thanks to Mr. Bernstein, A Strange & Special Air.

I could sit here and try to break down the painting, talking about color and contrast, texture and depth.  Line quality and composition.  All of the things that I might momentarily consider while I’m at work on such a painting.  But when all is said and done, I still have no idea why it has its own life, its own strange and special air.

Except that I feel that I am there, transported into that strange and special air,  when I look at it.

And glad of it.

Perhaps that is enough and all that needs to be considered. For now, I accept that and will be satisfied to dwell in this landscape with its strange and special air.

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Between

Posted in Opinion, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on November 28, 2015| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- BetweenA man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

–-Albert Camus

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These lines above are from an essay, Between Yes and No,  written by the French Nobel Prize-winning writer Albert Camus.  It basically states, in sometimes grim detail, his belief that art “exalts and denies simultaneously.”  In short, truth is generally somewhere in the middle, never absolutely in yes or no.  Yes or no is generally an oversimplified view.

While I may not fully understand all the subtleties of Camus’ essay, I do fully agree with the premise as I see it in my own simplified way.  I think that art communicates best when it contains both the yes and the no— those polar oppositions that create a tension to which we react on an emotional level.  For example, I think my best work has come when it contains opposing elements such as optimism tinged with with the darkness of fear or remorse.

Yes and no.

I guess it’s this thought that brought the title for the new piece ( 4″ by 4″ on paper)  at the top which I call Between. Simply put,  I see it as the Red Tree being torn between the nebulous  desire of the Moon’s promise set against the security of its earthly home, represented by the patchwork quilt-like look of the surrounding landscape.  Between the unknown and known.

Somewhere in between the yes and the no…

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Casting Spells

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Spellbound

“Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,/Above, beneath, betwixt, between”

—Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

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This new painting has a feeling of magic for me, the feeling of an incantation being cast out into the dark of night.  There’s a sense of wishing in the way the Red Tree postures beneath the moon, asking whatever force that moves the moon and brings the light to cast a spell and bring about some sort of change.

Perhaps a spell is nothing more than wishes spoken aloud and defining that gnawing desire inside ourselves.  After all, once we know what we truly want we begin to shape the world subtly, and often unwittingly, so that these wishes might be fulfilled.  And sometimes, if the belief behind them is strong,  these spells become reality.  But many other times the spell is lost in the ether of time and space and they  never come to be.

Such is the nature of spells.

I am calling this piece Casting Spells.

For this Sunday Morning Music, I thought this song  would be the right accompaniment to this painting.  It’s a version of I Put a Spell On You, originally written and performed by the inimitable Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.  This version is from  another true original, the late great  Nina Simone.  Great version.

Have a great Sunday and watch out for spells–they’re floating all over the place out there.

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The Decisive Moment/ Redux

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , , on November 3, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I didn’t really feel like writing this morning.  Just one of those things. But I had come across this post from about three years back in the past day while working on another project. It’s about a piece that I really like for many reasons and I wanted to share both the painting and the words that go along with it today. 

GC Myers- The Decisive Moment 2013-sm“There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.”

–Cardinal de Retz  (1613-1679)

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This is a new painting, an 18″ square canvas that carries the title  The Decisive Moment.  Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson , a favorite of mine, took that phrase from the quote above and used it to describe that moment in searching for a image when the photographer makes the creative decision to snap the photo.  But I see the term at play in everything we do, everything we are.  We are all the result of moments of decision.  Every day offers us new choices for moving ahead and very seldom do we ponder where these often simple and mundane decisions might ultimately lead our lives.

I think about this all the time when I consider the course my life and career has taken.  Several of the galleries in which I show came about as the result of a series of random decisions and if any of those choices leading up to the final result had differed in any way, my entire life might be completely different.

Even the beginning of my painting  career might not have occurred if I had decided that working off a ladder on that September day twenty years ago was not a great idea. I would not have fallen and would not have found the time or inspiration to begin painting. Maybe it would have come anyway at some other point but who knows? And would that decision to follow painting at that later date yield the same results?

I see it in genealogy as well.  When  I look at the charts that show one’s whole ancestry laid out in an ever widening mesh of connections all I can think is how we are all built on a huge set of random choices and pure chance.  If any single one  of those thousands of connections had not been made the whole mesh that brought us here would fall away and our very existence would not have occurred.  If one ancestor had not returned from the many wars, if one ancestor had not been the lucky child that survived the many diseases that took so many children in the earlier days of our country, if one ancestor had turned left instead of right and not met that person who became their other half— it’s a  delicate dance of moments that leads us all to the here and now.

That’s kind of what I see in this painting.  I wanted it to be a simple composition that had a sense of  the drama of the moment and the realization of  all of the decisions that led to that moment.  This piece was done for a couple, Claire and Richard,  that Cheri and I met while we at Yosemite, one rainy afternoon when we happened to sit with them over tea at the Ahwahnee Lodge.

We spent a pleasant hour in conversation and learned a lot about their lives and how they came together.  I won’t share that info here out of respect for their privacy outside of saying that Richard is a Brit and Claire a California girl who chanced across each other a number of years back and maintained a long distance romance.  They were married and celebrating their anniversary at the lodge.  Their story  made me think about how many random decisions had to be made for them to come together at all.  When you think about where we are and how things could easily be different it makes every moment, every decision, take on greater weight.

So, savor and enjoy the moment.  It may seem innocuous now but it may change your life in ways you could never see coming.

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