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Posts Tagged ‘Red Tree’

On the Lake Road

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

On the Lake Road

What if culture itself is nothing but a halt, a break, a respite, in the pursuit of barbarity?

–Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times

This is another new small painting (only 2″ by 4″!) that is included in the Little Gems show now hanging at the West End Gallery. It’s called On the Lake Road. The first thing that came to mind for me was that it reminded me of the feel of the some of the roads that run around the edges of the lakes here in the Finger Lakes region of NY, especially in the summer when the roads are filled with summer residents and vacationers all seeking a pastoral break from their regular lives. There’s an almost palpable feeling of ease as you drive on those roads with the lake right there with you amid the quaint summer cottages.

I saw that feeling in this piece and named it accordingly.

While looking for a literary bit to pair with it, I came across this quote from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and it stopped me in my tracks. It made me wonder if our natural instinct as a species was one of barbarity and if art was one of the few things that kept from fully following that instinct.

Were all forms of art just a means to stifle our barbaric impulse? Is it meant to remind us that we have another option beyond our inborn tendency toward cruelty, selfishness, and tribalism? Does it exist to let us know that, though it is naturally within us, we have ability to reject that instinct and instead choose compassionate kindness? 

I don’t know. I am sure there all sorts of examples and differing definitions of art that contradict this but sitting in the dark in the computer screens glow at 5 AM, it sounds plausible. After all, so much great art in all forms has come from times when we were battling our own barbarity, often offering us another vision of what might be. And I believe we might find that the barbarians among us, those who are without empathy and compassion, also have no room in their life for art.

I might expand the old saying music has charms to sooth the savage breast (which, by the way, goes back to the first line from the 1697 play The Mourning Bride by William Congreve) to include all forms of art. 

Can even a small painting like On the Lake Road serve as a levee against our potential floods of barbarity?

Maybe. I would like to think so.

Here’s a song I’ve loved for many years now from the legendary bluegrass duo of Flatt & Scruggs. This is their cover of a Bob Dylan song, Down in the Flood.

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The Resistance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Resistance– At West End Gallery

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

I see this new painting, The Resistance, as being about the willingness to stand one’s ground when the prevailing winds bellow against, trying to force you in a direction in which you do not want to go. You can read that interpretation as being political, topical, or merely symbolic of one holding tight to their principles. It’s a painting, ostensibly a piece of art, so that’s up to you.

Whatever the case, it’s a little piece that speaks loudly for me which is why I had not hesitation in coupling it with the words at the top from Dietrich Boenhoeffer. He and his writings, especially his posthumous Letter and Papers from Prison, are the subject of what has easily been my most popular blog post, On Stupidity.

Dietrich Boenhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German pastor and theological writer who stood in direct opposition to the Nazi regime and spoke out against its programs of eugenics, euthanasia, and genocide. He fled Germany and had an opportunity to stay in the US in the late 1930’s, safe from the reach of the Nazis. But after only two weeks in NYC, he insisted on returning, believing that if he were to rebuild the German church in the war’s aftermath, he must endure the conflict with its people.  In June of 1939, he returned and joined the German resistance to Hitler and Naziism.

He was imprisoned in a German prison in 1943 and later transferred to a concentration camp. He was implicated in a plot to assassinate Hitler in April of 1945 and was sentenced to death after a court martial trial in which there were no witnesses, evidence or any form of defense provided for him. He was hanged in the final days of the war. The legacy of his courage and the strength of his resistance are still celebrated around the free world today.

As I said, this painting may represent that sort of resistance for you. You might well just see it as simply being about a strong wind blowing against a person and a tree. Or you might be a bit of a contrarian (as I am) and see it as a symbol of not being swayed by popular opinion as symbolized by the wind’s effect here. Or you might expand that reading of this painting and see it in an existential sense. Again, that decision is your privilege and responsibility.

However you see it, I hope you see something for and of yourself in it.

This small painting, The Resistance, is 3″ by 3″ on paper, and is now at the West End Gallery for their annual Little Gems exhibit. The show is hung in the gallery for viewing now and the opening reception is next Friday, February 7.

Here’s a song from Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band to go with this all. Maybe it’s a little too on the nose but the song is Against the Wind. For some unknown reason, I have never shared anything from Bob Seger here even though I was big fan of his work, especially in the 70’s and 80’s. I think it’s just a case of holding on to some things and losing track of others. But it’s almost always solid stuff.

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Completeness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 16, 2025| 4 Comments »

Completeness— Coming to West End Gallery

With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child, he walked along, peacefully, quietly. He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace.

― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Welcome back. It’s been about ten or eleven days since I last welcomed you here. Good to be here and good to have you back. I don’t know that I needed a break from this part of what I do but I needed a little extra time to get back in the swing of things on the bigger part of what I do, which is painting.

Did I get back into the swing of things, find a groove?

Hard to say.  But I was very productive. More than expected, to be honest. That’s the advantage of getting to work on the small pieces for the Little Gems as a reentry point. Smaller work obviously takes less time to complete than much larger works so rhythm builds quickly as I move from one piece to the next. There’s little time between them to lose the new spark or the new thought. Momentum is easily maintained.

This allows me to examine new spaces as well as new or enhanced takes on the normal themes of my work. Some work takes me forward and some is a reexamination of the past.

Some will surprise you. Hopefully in a good way but maybe not. I might like it but it might not be your cup of tea. And that’s okay. Nobody is required to like anything I do here, though I guess one might wonder why you’re here if that is the case.

Will this momentum or new ideas be carried into the following several months of work? I can’t tell at this point but generally the answer leans toward yes based on past decades of going through this. My own first reaction on this work is strong, creating the excitement that I was seeking so I am hoping it does take hold for me. 

That being said, I will be showing this new work in the coming weeks leading up to the February 7th opening of the Little Gems show at the West End Gallery.

The first piece I am showing is an 8″ by 6″ canvas piece titled Completeness. It was one of the first pieces I worked on and, while I am not sure it breaks new ground within the body of my work, it really provided a big jolt of energy for me, doing just what I hoped it might which was to set a pretty high bar for where the work that followed in its wake might go. 

I also thought this was good piece to show first since it represented a central theme in my work, which is finding a sense of wholeness within myself. This painting felt whole, as though the broken shards of the sky had been finally reassembled to reflect down on the fully formed and complete Red Tree. 

It just felt right.

Here’s a song that kind of goes with this piece. It’s Love You To from the Beatles classic Revolver album. George’s sitar playing links well with the passage from Siddhartha and I could imagine the lyrics resonating with the Red Tree here:

Each day just goes so fastI turn around, it’s passedYou don’t get time to hang a sign on me
Love me while you canBefore I’m a dead old man
 
A lifetime is so shortA new one can’t be boughtBut what you’ve got means such a lot to me

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Downtime

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Niche— At Principle Gallery, Alexandria

Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don’t believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity.

–Anna Quindlen, Loud and Clear

As I hinted yesterday, I am going on a short hiatus from the blog. I don’t know how long it will last, maybe a week or so. Whenever I have taken a break here in the past it usually ends up shorted that I initially intended so I imagine this will be the same.

This isn’t really going to be downtime in the way Anna Quindlen describes above. I have already had an ample amount of downtime but it wasn’t the kind that refreshes. The emphasis recently was more on the down part of downtime. 

No, this hiatus is more about reestablishing the better parts of my work habit and getting back into a creative groove, the kind that becomes a motor that propels everything forward.

Besides, I build downtime into my day as a rule. It’s time to idle and think, time to look up things that pique my interest, time spent listening to music or reading, or time just looking out the window or laying on the floor with the cats. 

 No, this hiatus is not downtime. It’s a return to dedicated work because work is the answer to what ails me. It is the answer to all my questions. And the question to all my answers. It is the alpha and the omega, a beginning and an end.

I always go to a piece of advice that the late artist Chuck Close gave in an interview as advice to young artists:

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the… work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.

That pretty much describes the motor that work provides for me. Work begets work.

And I am ready to get back to work.

For this Sunday Morning Music, here’s a song that I’ve played here before, Work Song. It was written by the brother of jazz great Cannonball Adderley, who originally performed the song as an upbeat  jazz piece. But it has been interpreted by a number of artists over the years, including great performances from Nina Simone and Tennessee Ernie Ford, whose version I played here only six months ago. I don’t like to replay a song so quickly but this version from a little know group called The Big Beats has its own funky feel that separates it a bit, give it a whole different flavor. The singer here is  Arlin Harmon. I don’t have a lot of info on either him or the Big Beats though from what I can glean Harmon was a highly regarded performer out in the Northwest in the early 1960’s. This is a solid rocking performance of a great song.

Gets my motor running. And that’s just what the doctor ordered.

I’ll be back in a week or so. Hope you will be back, as well.

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Breaktime?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 4, 2025| 2 Comments »

In the Rhythm of the World– At West End Gallery

Our minds must have relaxation: rested, they will rise up better and keener. Just as we must not force fertile fields (for uninterrupted production will quickly exhaust them), so continual labor will break the power of our minds. They will recover their strength, however, after they have had a little freedom and relaxation.

–Seneca the Younger, On Tranquility of the Mind

Just a reminder that today is the last day to visit the West End Gallery in Corning, NY before they go on a short winter break from January 5 through January 20.

Everyone needs a little break, as Seneca pointed out in the passage above from about two thousand years ago, in order to recharge one’s batteries and regain some vigor. I have kind of been on a hiatus myself for the last couple of months, barely lifting a brush during that time. I had been feeling a bit beaten down and had lost a bit of pep in my step.

Just a feeling of blah. I don’t know if blah itself is a real thing but if you’ve felt it, you know what I mean.

But I believe I am emerging slowly from it. I have just finished some of a group of small pieces for the upcoming Little Gems show that opens on February 7 at the West End Gallery. It was awkward at first, but momentum grew with each small painting. The urge to pick up the brushes and see paint on a surface has returned and seems to grow with each passing day. 

It has been very beneficial to me that the Little Gems show has always fallen at this time of the year when I am ebbing low. The small scale of the paintings allows me to work on things that I might otherwise put off, to explore new themes and possibilities. To learn and attempt new things. To sometimes fail then take the lesson learned from failing and make something better.

Though it is work, it is most invigorating, not depleting at all. Like priming a pump. 

Or fertilizing a field– maybe that’s the more apt description?

I don’t know about that, but it feels good to feel the giddiness of creating something new again, to feel that there is something ready to come out once again. It has been absent for the last month or two and has been sorely missed. From going through this cycle many times before, I knew it would come eventually. It seemed to take a little longer this year and the wait became excruciating.

But it is close to being back in full and I am excited.

I may be taking a short break here on the blog for the next couple of weeks to more deeply reengage with this newly recovered rhythm. While I was on my short hiatus from painting my work here on the blog continued and it might be that I need a break. Might need to fertilize the field?

Maybe. We’ll see how it goes.

If you get a chance today, stop into the West End Gallery before they go on break. Hope they can fully recharge their batteries.

Here’s an absolute favorite Beatles song. I don’t know when I last shared it but it feels like it needs to go with this post. This is Tomorrow Never Knows.

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Building Treasures

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 2, 2025| 4 Comments »

Hermitage— At the West End Gallery

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
—Lao Tzu

Trying to get the new year kicked off in the right way with the words above from Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher and father of Taoism. I am not a big fan of resolutions but do believe in reminders. It never hurts to be nudged to the fact that those three things– simplicity, patience and compassion— are the basis for a satisfying and peaceful life. All three are critical in maintaining our balance amidst the machinations of the outer world.

I tend to believe that the three are inextricably connected, each providing sustenance and direction for the other two.

But like all great treasures, they are sometimes difficult to obtain and keep. I know that I sometimes feel like I am close to that mother lode of all three virtues, only to find that I have lost most of it.

Lost my patience with everything and everyone.

Lost any sense of simplicity through overthinking and overcomplicating things.

And worst of all, lost most of my compassion for others.

In such moments, I am penniless in the spiritual sense. And I can feel the darkness of this. 

But if even a tiny iota of these three things remains, if my pocketbook for them is not totally empty, then there is hope. It seems that this is a treasure that builds quickly through an odd quirk: not through hoarding but through being generous in sharing this wealth with others.

Expending all three compounds their value in a way that would make the greediest hedge fund manager envious. 

Well, maybe not that guy.

Anyway, after what felt like a bleak end to the last year, I find myself a bit short on all three things. A bit spiritually impoverished. What better time to begin to rebuild one’s treasure with the clean slate of a new year?

I’m game. What do I have to lose?

Here’s song that feels like it might fit the theme here. It’s about seeking simplicity, about cutting out all the detritus and clutter and finding one’s own little nirvana. This has been a favorite for over 50 years. Here’s the late John Prine and his Spanish Pipedream.

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They Can’t Take That Away From Me

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 28, 2024| 3 Comments »

Too Many Moons
At Principle Gallery

We may never never meet again, on that bumpy road to love
Still I’ll always, always keep the memory of

The way you hold your knife
The way we danced until three
The way you changed my life
No, no they can’t take that away from me
No, they can’t take that away from me

–George and Ira Gershwin, They Can’t Take That Away From Me, 1937

Coming to the end of the year. As with most every year, there are some things that beg to be forgotten– it seems like there are more of these than normal this year. Not my favorite year in many ways.

But even so, there are always things that I want to remember, things that I want to hold onto that mark this year. Some are bigger memories and some are tiny but everlasting– an impression of a smile or glance from another. A kind word from a stranger or a friend.

Things that remain with you through thick and thin. Things that stay when all else is lost.

Things that can’t be taken away.

Like the old Gershwin song says.

The song, They Can’t Take That Away From Me, was written by the George and Ira Gershwin and first performed by Fred Astaire in the 1937 movie Shall We Dance. George Gershwin died two months after the film’s release. Since that time the song has become one of the great entries to the American songbook, performed by a seemingly endless list of jazz and pop singers. There are so many great versions of this song by some of the greatest vocalists of all time that it’s hard to pick one that might stand out for everybody.

For myself, I always come back to the Billie Holiday versions of the song which she started performing in 1937. I like her early performances but the one below from 1957 is a favorite. It’s a great version that is a clean and bright production with top notch players–Ben Webster on sax and Barney Kessel on guitar– backing her.

Give a listen. And pay heed to those deep memories that no one can take away from you.

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Affirming Silence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 22, 2024| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Affirmation 2024

Affirmation— Now at Principle Gallery

Take refuge in silence. You can be here or there or anywhere. Fixed in silence, established in the inner ‘I’, you can be as you are. The world will never perturb you if you are well founded upon the tranquility within. Gather your thoughts within. Find out the thought centre and discover your Self-equipoise. In storm and turmoil be calm and silent. Watch the events around as a witness. The world is a drama. Be a witness, inturned and introspective.

– Ramana Maharshi

This time of year is one of stress for many, especially for those who are a bit withdrawn. There’s a lot of motion and sound surrounding the tension that comes with the obligation in trying to please others. The calming effect of silence is absent. Thinking about this brought me to the post below from back in 2013, one that I have never revisited. It seems to speak, in a way, to the need for that bit of quiet that might be missing in the season. 

Since this is the time for Sunday Morning Music and since it is the holiday season, I thought I’d share a Christmas song that is as calming as they come. It’s the late great Vince Guaraldi and his Christmastime is Here. This is the instrumental version without the chorus of kids. It’s a good listen anytime of the year.

[From 2013]

I often speak of seeking quiet, even absolute silence. I all too often come up short in my search, usually the victim of my own fears and shortcomings which cause me to fill the void around me with sound and chaos.

Silence is pushed aside.

It is only in those times when I allow myself to be pulled completely into my work that I feel the silence slowly creeping back in, stilling the fears and doubts that seem to wail around me like sirens at times. It is at these moments while painting that I feel in a small way as though I am like a witness that the great guru Ramana Maharsi advises us to be in the passage above.

I am then calm and silent. I watch and gather my inner thoughts as I feel myself melding with the colors and forms before me. It is absolute peace as I go deeper into this inner realm.

That’s as close as I can describe in words the feeling I have when I lose myself to painting. The painting shown here is an example of this feeling. It is a different painting than the one shown in the 2013 post. But like that painting, the one shown, Affirmation, is simple and quiet yet richly harmonious and full.

It feels outside of time, always in the present. It is both inward and outward looking, a silent witness that is not fearful of the future or regretful of the past. It is just as it is– quiet and placid.

All that I seek.

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Absorbing Quiet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 21, 2024| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Absorbing Quiet

Absorbing Quiet— At West End Gallery

A world where beauty and logic, painting and analytic geometry, had become one.

–Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, 1939

I am relatively sure that my use and interpretation of this passage from a novel by Aldous Huxley is a departure from its original context. The novel, which is considered by some to be the inspiration for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane script, concerns an ultrawealthy movie mogul who lives with a Hollywood starlet in a vast estate where he displays the products– rare art, for example– of his unquenchable acquisitiveness.

The novel is mainly concerned with his desire to acquire the one thing he can’t have–immortality. The title of the novel is a line from Tithonus, a poem from Alfred Tennyson. which is about a king who asks the gods for immortality.  It is granted but the king has overlooked asking for eternal youth. As he ages, he grows ever physically older and frailer. His immortality becomes a horrible and never-ending burden.

The painting here, Absorbing Quiet, obviously has nothing to do with either novel or the poem. However, I felt that the line from Huxley above captured what I was seeing in this piece– beauty and geometry and maybe a little logic all coming together to create a moment of stillness. And the Red Tree at the center of this stillness, contentedly taking it all in.

Satisfied with what ii contained in that moment, not craving more. Not immortality nor youth. Not fame nor fortune.

Just content in its place in the geometry and beauty of the moment.

An immortal moment.

True wealth. 

You’ve probably had enough Christmas music at this point of the season so here’s a song to go along with the thought. It’s Baby You’re a Rich Man from the Beatles. It beats hearing Last Christmas for the umpteenth time from Wham! or the seemingly endless string of singers who have covered it.

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To Find is the Thing.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 19, 2024| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- Time Patterns 2024

Time Patterns– At West End Gallery

I can hardly understand the importance given to the word research in connection with modern painting. In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing. Nobody is interested in following a man who, with his eyes fixed on the ground, spends his life looking for the purse that fortune should put in his path. The one who finds something no matter what it might be, even if his intention were not to search for it, at least arouses our curiosity, if not our admiration.

—Pablo Picasso, “Picasso Speaks,” 1923

To find is the thing…

I often write here about searching for something with my work. It’s usually something I can’t describe in any way that helps myself or the reader. It’s just something that pulls me forward.

Well, that’s what I thought, for the most part.

Reading the passage above from Picasso recently set me thinking that perhaps it was not a search at all, at least not in the way I had portrayed it.

Perhaps I was driven onward because I had found something and felt the need to express and share it. Or perhaps to keep that feeling of discovery, that eureka! moment, alive within myself– and within others who sensed whatever I had found for themselves when they viewed the work.

I can’t say for sure. I am still wrangling with this. But it makes some sense to me. A painting begins as an exploration, a search, but as it progresses it moves toward a revelation of some sort. The search is in the process, not in the resulting work.

At least, for the artist. It may differ for the viewer. They may see it as a way toward something they need and seek. Something they may not even realize is needed or sought. Perhaps they will find that same thing in the final work that that I had found, that same thing that seems to somehow answer vague, unasked questions.

Who knows for sure? But this idea that the work in not so much a search as it is a revealing of what has been found satisfies something in me.

Maybe that what was I was looking for in the first place?

Or maybe this is all one of those dreams where everything you wonder about suddenly seems to make perfect sense and there is that momentary feeling of elation that is then suddenly and completely gone once your eyes open.

Could it be that?

I don’t know but here’s an old song from Todd Rundgren that came to mind while I was finishing up. I haven’t heard this tune in many years and Todd Rundgren is one of those artists who was very popular in the 70’s but has faded somewhat from the front of the public mind the in the decades that followed, though he still is actively recording and performing. Just on a smaller stage as the musical outlets    became narrower and more niched. This is I Saw the Light.

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