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Posts Tagged ‘Sara Teasdale’

Blue Haven

Posted in Event, Music, Poetry, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on May 28, 2021| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- Blue Haven sm

From my spirit’s gray defeat,
From my pulse’s flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault’s slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.

For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit’s sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.

― Sara Teasdale, Refuge

Today, I am sharing the painting at the top, Blue Haven, which is another from my annual show, Between Here and There, that opens a week from today, June 4th, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. Previews of the show become available today by contacting the gallery.

I thought I’d pair this painting with the short poem above, Refuge, from Sara Teasdale, the great and tragic American poet. Teasdale (1884-1933) wrote a poem, Strange Victory, that remains a favorite and was the inspiration for a group of my early paintings. Her poem and the painting both deal with creating a refuge or safe haven from the forces of the outer world that so often make us feel as though we have been pummeled without mercy. Finding a way or a place in which we can  hunker down and endure is sometimes all we are left.

Sometimes, just enduring is a form of triumph.

I believe that is what this painting says for me.

I hope it shows itself properly here, so that you can see it for what it is. It was a very difficult painting to photograph with its multiple contrasts and shades of blue, which has aspects and depths that are especially hard to properly capture. After a quite a few attempts I am still not sure that this image fully captures it. The difficult ones, those that are hard to capture and those that deal with complex emotions, are often my favorites. I think it’s because the viewer has to work a bit to fully understand the piece in their own way. It doesn’t offer its rewards easily.

I am also sharing a choral piece that is based on this Teasdale poem. It is surprising how much of her work has been the basis for musical works. I had no idea until I did a quick search this morning and found that there are several different compositions based on this poem alone. The one below spoke most clearly to me. It is  short piece for solo piano written by Edward Enman during the early days of the pandemic using Teasdale’s poem as inspiration. There is also a choral selection from composer Audrey Snyder that is lovely as well.

Give a listen to one or both, if you have a few moments.

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Don’t Give Up

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Music, Painting, Poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on March 4, 2018| 2 Comments »

Woke up late this morning, at least by my standards. I bolted awake directly coming out one of those weird dreams that seem like something out of a dystopian novel like 1984 or Brave New World.

Or taken from any recent newspaper.

I wanted to go back to sleep just to try again, maybe come out this sleep with something better. Second times a charm, you know.

But I couldn’t so I headed over to the studio for my morning rituals. But that feeling from my dreams lingered, like a foreboding prophetic omen that is always at the edge of my thoughts and my vision.

I have a floater in my right eye that sometimes, when I am looking straight ahead, will dart across the far right periphery of my field of vision. It’s been there a while now but I often still finding myself jerking my head reflexively to see what is there. Of course, there is never anything there yet its continued presence gives me an unsettling feeling as though something could be there when I look the next time.

Uncomfortable dream or terrible omen? I’m rooting for uncomfortable dream but who knows what our subconscious is up to these days.  So much of the info, the indicators, the patterns it selects to process from the outside world enter without our knowledge.

It all reminds me of the image at the top, a painting from back in 1996 or thereabouts. I can’t locate a slide of this piece but came across an old photocopy yesterday and was really taken with it. It’s called Strange Victory II designed as a kind of companion to Strange Victory which was an early painting that I showed here and was based on a favorite poem of mine with that title from Sara Teasdale.

There is a lot that I like in this painting– the subtlety of the colors, the textures and the contrast of the figure and the tree against the backdrop. It is so simply constructed but has a fullness that is often elusive to me as an artist.

I think it’s a great companion piece for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. This week I chose Don’t Give Up, the Peter Gabriel song from back in the 1980’s. This version is from Willie Nelson accompanied by Sinead O’Connor, from his 1996 album, Across the Borderline. I think it’s a first rate cover of the song and I can envision the image of this painting when I listen to it.

Take a listen and have good day and better dreams.

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Is It Snow?

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on January 20, 2014| 5 Comments »

GC Myers-2014

I am still taking in this new painting, an 18″ by 18″ piece on canvas that remains unnamed as I ponder it a  bit more.  It is, at first glimpse, a snow painting.  At least, it was intended to be so.  For me, there is something quite challenging in presenting this surface that translates as pristine but, in fact, is far from it, having multiple layers of color beneath it which show through at points.  The edges show a glow of red oxide and violet, giving it a warmth that belies the coolness of the white blanket.  It’s a departure from the snow of Dale Nichols‘  paintings that I showed here yesterday, which is pure and luminous.

The thing that I have found with using the white of the snow is that it really displays the lines of the forms underneath.  The lines of  landscape in the foreground here, for example, really pop off the surface.  This could be a bad thing if they don’t have an organic sense of rightness,  that vague and elusive quality to which I often refer.  I think this piece has it.

While looking at this painting this morning, I began to ask myself, “What if that isn’t snow?”  This change of perspective gave the piece a very different reading , one that I hadn’t thought of when it was being painted but one that might pass through the mind of some folks.  What if this is some desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, devoid of  vegetation and covered in ash and dust?  The ravaged  landscape of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road immediately came to mind.  The painting suddenly took on a different feel but it still felt warm and even jubilant in a way.  As though the Red Tree,  fatigued at the end of that dark ribbon of road, had finally met the warm gaze of the sun that burned through the hazy sky.  The Red Tree was still standing despite the desolation around it and was rejuvenated, lifted up, by the sun’s energy.

It brought to mind the poem Strange Victory from the late Sara Teasdale, a poem that I have featured here in the past.  It is one of my favorite poems and expresses the contrast that I often try to impart in my work.  I think it fits this reading of this painting very well.

 Strange Victory

To this, to this, after my hope was lost,

To this strange victory;

To find you with the living, not the dead,

To find you glad of me;

To find you wounded even less than I,

Moving as I across the stricken plain;

After the battle to have found your voice

Lifted above the slain.

–Sara Teasdale

Funny how a simple shift in perception  can alter the whole meaning of a piece.  It was originally meant as snow and will probably remain so .  But for the moment I find myself asking:  Is it snow?

 

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Strange Victory

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, tagged , , on March 14, 2012| 2 Comments »

 

I woke up very early this morning with many things running through my mind.  All sorts of thoughts and  imagery crowded my thoughts and I found myself thinking of this painting above, Strange Victory.  It was painted many years ago and this is the only image I have of it, a bit more washed out than the original so it doesn’t quite catch the subtlety of the snowfield.  It has long been a favorite of mine as well as of my wife who calls it the Dr. Zhivago painting.  It is perhaps the piece I regret letting go most of all but at least I know where it is and know that it is well cared for with its current owner.

I particularly like the barren feel of the snowy plain and the way the sky dominates and sets the emotional tone of the piece, its red tones set against the cold setting in a way that makes the moment seem large as the figure trudges slowly forward.  The rifle slung over his shoulder with the gun  barrel down gives it an ominous sense, as though this figure was returning from battle or returning empty-handed from a hunt for sustenance.  The moment just seems to loom large in this piece.

The title came after the painting was complete and was based on a favorite poem from Sara Teasdale, the great and tragic American poet.  It is short and elegant, filled with the grand emotional swing of going from the depths of despair to an elation in finding someone familiar who has somehow survived where others have not.  To find this simple discovery as something to rejoice of in the face of  what seems to be total loss.  Just a powerful statement of existence.

So, while I am up much earlier than I normally would be, I find myself thinking of this painting and these words.  There are worse things…

 

Strange Victory

To this, to this, after my hope was lost,

To this strange victory;

To find you with the living, not the dead,

To find you glad of me;

To find you wounded even less than I,

Moving as I across the stricken plain;

After the battle to have found your voice

Lifted above the slain.

—Sara Teasdale

 

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Strange Victory

Posted in Influences, tagged , on October 1, 2008| Leave a Comment »

One of my favorite poems and an influence on a number of my paintings:

 

Strange Victory

 

To this, to this, after my hope was lost,

  To this strange victory;

To find you with the living, not the dead,

  To find you glad of me;

To find you wounded even less than I,

  Moving as I across the stricken plain;

After the battle to have found your voice

  Lifted above the slain.

                                                                                                 —  Sara Teasdale

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