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Posts Tagged ‘Red Tree’

Out of Line

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.
― Ray Bradbury

Zen and the Art of Writing

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GC Myers- Out of Line smI am in the final stages of preparing work for my show, Into the Common Ground, that opens December 5th at the Kada Gallery in Erie.  Final touches on the last few paintings. Framing. Packing.  Details, details, details.

  It is  both my favorite time and least favorite time in the studio.  Favorite because if things go as normal, the work peaks right about this time and the show’s personality and feel really shows through.  I can now see the work as a group hanging in my mind and witnessing it as it comes together is a wonderful feeling that repels the ever present self-doubts that creep in from time to time– still.

It is my least favorite because of the all important detail work that takes place.  This week will be filled with last brush strokes, the smell of varnish and stain in the air and the dust from freshly sanded frames coating my clothing.  It’s not that I mind doing this work–it’s exhilarating to see a piece sometimes transform when it is framed.  It’s just that mind is moving ahead of my body.  I am already seeing in my mind new work inspired by the flurry of the last work from this show but can’t act on it as my body is busy on the details of the show.  There’s a weird tension between the relief of being done with a group of work and wanting to keep going that puts me a bit on edge during this time.

The piece above is one of the later pieces from this group.  It’s a 12″ by 36″ painting on canvas that I call Out of Line.  It is obviously, or so I think, that this is a piece that deals with our singularity as individuals.

For many of us, stepping out of line or expressing our individuality is an uncomfortable thing.  We don’t have the comfort and protection of the crowd to hide our flaws, our quirks.  But for some, it is just a matter of being.  They accept and even celebrate their own flaws and quirks because they make them who they are.  And that is as it should be.

Or so I think.

I don’t think I need to go any further on this painting– it speaks very well for itself, thank you.

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Chaos and Order

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on November 15, 2014| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- Chaos and Order smIn its simplest terms, this painting is about all that we don’t know, individually and collectively.

I call this 20″ by 24″ canvas Chaos and Order.  In it, the Red Tree dwells in a land that is apparently in order, a clean landscape of neat rows in the fields and a clear path that takes one through it.  It is seemingly the master of its domain, possessing knowledge of all things within its reach.

Yet, by merely looking into the night sky and seeing the great patterns of chaos written upon it, the Red Tree realizes the limits and boundaries of its knowledge.  It tries to make it fit into some sort of orderliness, something that it can understand on its limited terms but the patterns are too great and come at it like the cacophony of a thousand different languages being spoken at once.

What is the message here?  That we are small and weak before the power of the universe?

Yes and No.  Yes, without knowledge, with only a fear of what lays in that chaos, we are weak and small.  But I don’t think that is the message I see here.   It is that we are merely searchers, still learning the secrets and languages hidden right before our eyes.   The great chaos we see before us might be daunting but we will always try to make order from it in order to find our place within it.  That is simply who we are.

This is another painting that will be at my show, Into the Common Ground, at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA,  opening December 5.

 

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Cradle of Light

Posted in Biographical, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on November 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

–Vladimir Nabokov

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GC Myers- Cradle of LightThis another painting that is headed to the Kada Gallery as part of my solo show, Into the Common Ground, opening there on December 5th.  I call this 12″ by 16″ canvas Cradle of Light, very much based on the idea expressed in the quote above from Vladimir Nabokov.  Similarly, I tend to believe that our lives are bursts of ephemeral light in the darkness of the universe, so preciously short that each moment in the light is a gift.

Maybe that explains my rising at the first vague hint of light in the early morning sky.  Our time here seems so short , so tenuous, that to waste the light seems foolhardy.  Of course, this realization doesn’t keep me  from squandering this rare commodity on an epic scale nearly every day.  But at first light I am always reminded of the fact of our mortality, of that short time we have to fulfill our purpose here.

Whatever that purpose might be…

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The Moment of Decision

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on October 30, 2014| 2 Comments »

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don’t know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn’t matter.

–Lewis Carroll

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GC Myers- The Moment of Decision smMaybe I should call this new painting The Cheshire Cat Tree instead of The Moment of Decision, which is the title I  gave to it.  There is a sort of  built-in grin in the curve of the lower path, as though it is all that remains after the Cheshire Cat has disappeared and the advice he offered Alice in the quote at the top seems to fit so well with anyone coming to any fork in the road.  And the Red Tree offers only, like the Cheshire  Cat, enigmatic advice and guidance at best for it knows that we alone are responsible for our decisions and the path that we will ultimately follow.

For me, this painting also has an interesting interplay between the direction of the two paths,  the lower one being more earthly and the other heading upward  toward a light filled horizon and the heavens above.  It seems to break the painting in two parts, opposing forces that co-exist in harmony.  Yin and yang.

Just a thought.

The Moment of Decision is 24″ by 36″ on canvas and will be part of my show at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA opening December 5.

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Many Ways to Wander

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on October 23, 2014| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Many Ways to Wander smWandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.

-Anatole France

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On Monday,  I showed  a work-in-progress at an early stage of a painting that is bound for my December show at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA.  Above is the resulting painting,  a 24″ by 48″ canvas that I am calling Many Ways to Wander.

For me, the title connects with the many paths that show themselves to the eye, from the fragmented white roads going in what seem to be several directions among the rolling foothills to the observatory’s relationship with the sun and space.  There is also the Red Tree’s posture which represents a spiritual questioning of the universe.  I also see it in the depth created by the distant hills and valleys, which create a sort of visual portal, representing for me an inner wandering.

There is a lot going on in this painting, with direction, color and shape.  But despite this it remains a quiet contemplative piece, with a sun that oversees all and acknowledges our need to search with a cool and non-judgmental eye, knowing that each will find their own path to follow in their own way.  And that is as it should be.

I’m enjoying this piece in the studio over the past few days.  There always seems to be a new angle to see it from, something new to glean from the details and forms, and that seems to pull m eye to it on a regular basis.  I find myself wandering in it throughout the day and I am calmed by it.  And that is all I can ask of it…

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Family Lines

Posted in Influences, Personal Mythology, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on October 21, 2014| 5 Comments »

In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man’s skin, — seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.
―Ralph Waldo Emerson

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GC Myers- Family Lines smThis is another newer painting that is headed to Erie for my show, Into the Common Ground,  in December at the Kada Gallery.  This 30′ by 40″ canvas is titled Family Lines with the Red Tree serving as the symbol of a family tree and the Red Chair acting as an offspring of it.  The broken segments of the winding path leading up to it represent for me the often arduous task of finding your connection to this tree while the light of the sky represents ultimate discovery and illumination.

I’ve often felt as though I had little definition of myself or my connection to the world through my ancestors.  My work as an artist has helped change this in many ways, giving me a portal for displaying who I am or  at least aspire to be in definition.  But my connection to my ancestors was always vague and hidden away beyond my knowledge.  I wondered who they were, what their stories held  and what traits they fed forward  through time to me.  I began to study my genealogy, hoping to discover some form of connection with the past that might help me better understand who I was in the present.  To discover what worlds the winding path that led to my own life traveled through.

It’s been a wonderful process that has given me greater connection with the past and with the history of this country and with those countries that gave birth to my ancestors.  Naturally, I am always drawn to the grand stories that are uncovered, the heroic and celebrated ancestors that I find myself hoping have somehow contributed some of their positive traits to my DNA.  But I am equally intrigued and touched by the simple and sometimes tragic tales that are uncovered.

I had earlier written of a great grand uncle who had lived his whole life in a county home for the infirmed. He was described in the censuses during his life as “feeble-minded” and he was unceremoniously buried  in an unmarked grave there at the county home.  I recently came across his death certificate and they listed him as a lifelong sufferer of epilepsy.  It made the story even more tragic in that this was perhaps a person who had a condition that would be treatable today.

I think of this person quite often.  His story is as much a part of that tree as those of  its more celebrated members.  It may not be the most beautiful leaf on the branch but it is there.  As Emerson says, we represent in some form a number of our ancestors and whose to say what part this ancestor plays in that piece of new music that is my life.

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As Clouds Roll By/ Redux

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Technique/History, tagged , , on October 17, 2014| 2 Comments »

Earlier in the week at the dinner at which I was speaking  I was asked why there were no windows or doors in my houses.  I answered that I wanted them to be somewhat anonymous and that leaving the windows and doors out allowed the eye to glide easily over them to the focal point of the painting.  I didn’t mention that I have painted houses and building with windows and doors, usually when the structure is a central figure in the composition.  I wrote a blog entry several years ago about one such painting.  In this essay I also mention how I came to paint clouds in the manner that I do, answering another question that I was recently asked.  Even though the painting shown is long in the hands of that collector, here’s what I had to say:

GC Myers- As Clouds Roll By 2010This  is a new painting that I’ve just finished, tentatively called As Clouds Roll By.  It’s a 14″ by 18″ image painted on ragboard.  It’s a composition that I have visited on a number of occasions, this time at the request of a collector in Pennsylvania, and one that I always get great pleasure from painting, savoring the subtle variations that make each piece unique .

Even though this is a very simple composition with few elements, the great satisfaction I feel after finishing a piece such as this is something I can’t fully explain.  Perhaps it’s the recognition of the things in this piece that fully jibe with what I hope to achieve in my paintings.  The simplicity of design. The quietude of vast open space.  The depth into the picture, even though it is a very simple composition.  The inviting warmth of the house and tree.  The languorous fashion in which the clouds roll by, in a way representing the slow and inevitable march of time.

It clicks a lot of my own buttons.

The clouds in this piece always take me back to the first time I painted clouds in that looked like these.  I was not yet a full-time painter and had obtained a large commisiion that would prove to be very important to me.  I was on a short deadline and was still painting in the dining area of our home at the time with large sheets of paper spread over folding tables.  I was working on a large triptych and was nearly finished when our late cat, Tinker, decided to explore the tables.  Bounding up, she stepped first in a damp part of my palette and ran across the three sheets, leaving perfect little paw prints in a watery blue tint in her wake.  As the echoes of my bellow faded, my mind raced as I looked at my now very unfinished work.

Start over?  No time.  Try to blend them in to the background?  Not with this particular style of painting.  I sat and looked, concentrating.  Wait a minute.  The prints only ran across the sky portion of all the sheets.  And they ran in lovely diagonal manner.

Quickly, I was at it with paint and within several minutes I had blocked in clouds where once there were paw prints.  It worked.  Tinker’s run across the sky fit the rhythm of the piece and the clouds actually gave a fullness to the composition that it had lacked.  It was actually quite an improvement.

So when I see clouds such as these, I always flash back to my initial panic and the subsequent discovery of good fortune in this happy accident.  Since that day, when what seems to be a disastrous event happens with one of my paintings I step back with a much calmer mind and eye with the knowledge that perhaps this is just a new opportunity to see things a new way.

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Here There Everywhere

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on October 15, 2014| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- Here There Everywhere smI’ve done several paintings through the years using textured surface that has bands or strings that twist and turn throughout.  It’s an extreme texture, more pronounced on than my typical surfaces, and, as a result, takes center stage in these pieces.  They become the driving force in the painting.

These bands that run through these paintings always spur something in me, some sense of wonder at the great unknowns of our world and universe.  The new painting shown here, Here There Everywhere, certainly does this for me.  Looking at it, I am filled with questions about the world or worlds that lie just past our perceptions.  Are there other dimensions, other pasts and futures swirling around us at any moment?  And if so, are we connected in some way to this web of chaotic energy or are we merely physical beings, unwitting bystanders in the great dance of the universe?

In this painting, the Red Tree serves as the questioner, living in the moment but recognizing the forces that permeate everything and give that moment a discernible depth and meaning beyond the simple beauty it can physically observe.  I know that I have had that feeling.  I might be out driving and see a certain curve of a field, a bend of a tree or the filtering light from the sun and suddenly feel an intense emotional response that seems to have no basis of origin in my past , one so strong that I find myself asking why and where it came from.

Perhaps this indefinable emotional is a brush with these other worlds, these energy forces?

I certainly don’t know.  Part of me wishes it to be so but part of me simply wants to savor that moment and emotion without questioning it.  Something to ponder on a gray autumn morning.

This painting, Here There Everywhere, is a 24″ by 30″ canvas and is part of my show, Into the Common Ground, at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA which opens in early December.

 

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Into the Common Ground

Posted in Opinion, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on September 30, 2014| 1 Comment »

Into the Common Ground/ GC MyersCommon Ground

Blood tells the story of your life
in heartbeats as you live it;
bones speak in the language
of death, and flesh thins
with age when up
through your pores rises
the stuff of your origin.

These days,
when I look in the mirror I see
my grandmother’s stern lips
speaking in parentheses at the corners
of my mouth of pain and deprivation
I have never known. I recognize
my father’s brows arching in disdain
over the objects of my vanity, my mother’s
nervous hands smoothing lines
just appearing on my skin,
like arrows pointing downward
to our common ground.

–Judith Ortiz Cofer

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The painting above, a 36″ by 36″ canvas, is titled Into the Common Ground.  It is part of my exhibit of the same name that will open in early December at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA.  I think the poem above from author Judith Ortiz Cofer fits very well with the theme of this show which is about recognizing the common bonds that are between us.

It seems that our world has become more and more fractured, the distance between people growing greater even as the world itself seems to be shrinking in so many ways.  We actively seek to find difference, something that distinguishes us from others.  And while I am an advocate of the individual and individualism, it should not come at the expense of losing the ability to identify the commonality that exists in all of us.  For to look in that mirror, as Cofer does in her poem, and not see the traces of your family and the influences of others written on your face is to lose empathy.

When empathy leaves, we fail to see the sufferings of others as our own, fail to imagine that such things could ever occur to ourselves.  The pain of others becomes dull and distant, unfelt to us as selfishness and greed pushes our empathy aside.  To lose empathy is to choose to live in a savage and ugly world.

And that is not the world that I see in this painting.

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Oh, The Places You’ll Go!: So Cal Edition

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, tagged , , , , , , on September 25, 2014| 8 Comments »

Art on Tap Class at Claremont Craft Ales

Art on Tap Class at Claremont Craft Ales

Sometimes your work physically goes to far distant places, such as those paintings that have went to embassies in Nepal, Uganda and Kuwait that  I wrote about yesterday.  But sometimes your work travels in ways that you can’t predict.

An online acquaintance forwarded the above image to me yesterday.  It was a strange sensation, seeing this mass of what looked to be 25 of my paintings looking out at me.  It took me a few seconds to figure out that I was looking at an art class that had reproduced one of my paintings.

Doing a little research, I discovered that this was an event called Art on Tap that is operated by Otterspace Arts in Claremont, California, east of Los Angeles.  Every several weeks, they hold this event at a local microbrewery, Claremont Craft Ales, where all attendees are instructed in how to paint works that have been selected by online voting.  They have recently chosen to make copies of paintings from Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keefe, Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet.  And me.

Even though I am pretty sure most of those in attendance had never heard of me or my work  before, I was still really flattered by this.  I know that this has taken place on a more local level, at kids classes in my area and one for adults at an Arts Council in the Finger Lakes, but it was gratifying to see my work’s imagery moving outward in this way.  I recognized at an early stage in this journey that creating images that are instantly recognizable as yours is one of the most important , and most difficult, steps in establishing yourself as an artist.  And seeing this photo made me think I was almost there.

I also liked their Facebook ads for the event.  I would like to think that there is a Sasquatch somewhere enjoying my work.  At the bottom is the original image.  I hope they enjoyed painting this painting and hope that it hangs with pride in their homes.

Claremont CA Art on Tap Otterspace adClaremont Original GC Myers Image

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