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Posts Tagged ‘Solo Show’

Through the Trees

Posted in Event, Favorite Things, In the Studio, tagged , , , , , on July 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

9921087 Through the Trees (and Toward the Light) rev sm

Through the Trees (and Toward the Light)– GC Myers

I have spent most of my life moving through the trees.

The title for my new solo exhibit at the West End Gallery, is Through the Trees. It is a show that focuses on the place of trees, specifically the Red Tree which has been my symbolic stand-in for the past twenty-plus years, in my work and in my psyche.

You see, I have spent much of my life moving through the forest whose trees and dark, cool spaces have been my companions since I was a child playing alone on the wooded hillside behind our old farmhouse.  It was there that I began to appreciate the importance of solitude and learned how to be alone.

My home and studios have been in the forest and looking out the window of my studio as I write this, I am greeted with a wall of verdant green foliage on the trees surrounding me. In the winter, the trunks and limbs of the trees are exposed like skeletons in shades of gray and black.

For the past twenty-four years I have left my home each day and walked through the trees to my studio, following a path that is now worn as though it has been in place since time began. And maybe it has. Who knows who may have traveled these woods in the ages before I found my way here?

I find a sort of symbology in this short trek, one that takes me through the darkness of the woods to the light of the clearing. I find unity with the trees and the wild spirit they represent during my walk and unity with humanity in my studio where I do the work that connects me with others.

But even in the studio, as I attempt to reach out to other humans the forest is always close at hand to remind me of wilder, primal parts of myself.

So, it is only natural that the tree shows itself so often in my work. This show highlights that fact and represents my journey from light to dark that takes place each day.

The painting at the top is the title piece for this show. It is called Through the Woods (and Toward the Light) and is 30” wide by 40” high. The show will be hung today and tomorrow and is available for previews. The opening for the show is next Friday, July 16, from 4-7 PM at the West End Gallery on Market Street in Corning.

At this point, I plan on being in attendance. I am honestly a bit nervous about that since it is my first appearance with people in the last two years. I feel a bit like an awkward kid. But unless something happens with our viral rate, I will be there to talk about my work and hopefully see some folks I haven’t seen in quite some time.

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Invocation in Blue

Posted in Event, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2021| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Invocation in Blue sm

A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood-pressure.

– Henri Matisse

Matisse certainly had it right.

For me, blue is the color of the soul and spirit and red the corporeal, the blood and body. Blue is the ethereal. Red is the carnal. I think that is why both colors play such a large part in my work. Actually, they play large parts in the work of most artists. They are two of the three primary colors for a good reason.

But in my work they often symbolize those two parts in us as individual humans– the body and the spirit, the carnal and the ethereal. Having the two come to terms within the picture and within myself is often part of my aim, something I usually don’t recognize until I am examining the painting after completion.

I think this new painting, a 16″ by 20″ canvas that is part of my new show at the Principle Gallery which opens next Friday, June 4. This piece is titled Invocation in Blue. I see it as dealing with that space between the spirit and the physical in each of us, about how we aspire to our higher aspects but are bound by our earthly desires.

Head in the stars, feet in the mud, figuratively speaking.

And that is sort of what I see here. The Red Tree aspires to the ethereal calm found in the endless blue of the night sky and the peaceful presence of the moon. But it is still rooted in the earth, still comforted and sustained by its earthly needs and desires. The patchwork of reds and purples seem almost like a quilt or comforter that mainly warms and protects but also restrains.

But even so, both of the worlds attached to each color have an appeal of their own. And in this piece, they dwell side by side, as they often do within some of us. It is a painting that has an acceptance of its place in the universe, that recognizes that we can and do exist in both the ethereal and the corporeal worlds. It is a painting of the peaceful balance that can exist between the two.

But, as always, that’s just my opinion. You might see it as something altogether different. And to that, I say, Good for you. That’s just as it should be.

Okay, here’s some music to accompany the painting. It’s also a great song to sip coffee by. It’s the great jazz piece Blue in Green. It is most often associated with Miles Davis. He is credited with writing it and his version is iconic. Brilliant. But I also like the version below from pianist Bill Evans who played on the Davis recording and was later revealed to be the true composer of the tune though he never received credit on the label or in royalties. It’s just a beautiful piece and I like to think it sums up the balance between the two worlds I discussed above.

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Between Here and There

Posted in Event, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 25, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Between Here and There

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

― Anatole France

The new painting above is the title piece for my new show, Between Here and There, which opens next Friday, June 4 at the Principle Gallery. It is 22″ high by 28″wide in size and is painted on linen.

Like many of my paintings, its meaning lies in a moment captured in a symbolic journey. That moment when one stops to look both ahead and behind and to also savor the moment of pause.

I have sometimes this journey as being like a labyrinth whose twists and turns sometimes gives you glimpses of your far destination even though there is so much more of the pattern to be traveled before reaching it. Soon, you might be at a point where your desired objective seems a million miles away though it seemed so close not so long ago.

The way I see this piece is that the closer Red Tree is at such a moment and sees itself at a future time on that distant hilltop, with an even better view forward into the distance and back into the past. It sees itself there as being a fuller being, wiser and more attuned to the world, than it sees itself here.

That is its desired destination.

But between here and there are obstacles to overcome, hills and mountains to climb and rivers and seas to cross. Battles to be waged and wounds to be healed. People to be found and people to be lost.

Moments of elation and moments of utter despair. Sometimes, the despair so dark and hopeless that the journey seems at an end.

But then, like a twist in the maze, the objective you so desire comes back into view and you stop to take it in. And in this moment as you look forward then look back at all that you have endured, you savor once more this pause.

You are what you are and one day you may be what you desire to be. It may be dark now but tomorrow offers the possibility of light. You remember then that this is how the journey goes, that the trek between here and there is never easy.

Nothing worth having ever is.

That’s my take on it. Your own may and probably should be different. We are, after all, unique creatures.

 

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The Peaceful Stillness

Posted in Biographical, In the Studio, Music, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on May 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- The Peaceful Silence sm

“The Peaceful Stillness”

I want to be quiet this morning. No, I need, not want, to be quiet this morning.

Need to be quiet.

It’s one of those days when I wake up in the dark of the early morning. My dreams, which evaporate as soon as my feet touch the cool floor, have somehow dashed any facade of confidence I may have been wearing and I am already a bit glum before I have even seen the first light of morning. I slip on my jeans that are covered with paint and as I slide my right leg in, my toe catches a small tear in the pant leg. For some reason, my jeans always tear in this same spot, just above the right knee.

But this morning my toe catches that tear and in the darkness I hear it rip even more. I feel anger and frustration layering on top the glum blueness I woke up with and I want to just let my toe rip the hell out the jeans then throw them across the room in the dark. And scream so hard that my diaphragm aches and my throat burns from the effort.

But I don’t. I restrain myself and just stand there in the dark stillness, taking a long breath of cool air. Then I calmly ease my leg into the torn jeans. My eyes adjust a bit to the dark and I can see out the window that morning light is beginning to sift through the trees. The sun will soon be up.

I tell myself there’s still time for hope. I just need to be quiet and let it find its way here this morning.

I make my way along the path through the woods to the studio and I feel much of the frustration and anger slip away. I am still a bit glum and blue but lying on the kitchen floor with my Hobie, the faithful and loving cat with which I share my space, helps. Her loud purrs of satisfaction are like an elixir. I am tempted to click on the news to catch up and immediately turn it off after about 45 seconds of it make my blood pressure tick up a few notches.

I need quiet but I need some music. I remember this piece from the great jazz pianist Bill Evans, Peace Piece. I put it on and its quietude and gentle tone bring me back. And the music keeps playing and I know I have dodged a bullet of sorts. My blue is okay now. It’s like an old grouchy friend who I know how to deal with.

I can manage this. All I need is some quietness, some light, some hope.

I am showing a new piece at the top, one that I call The Peaceful Stillness. It’s 18″ by 24″ on aluminum panel and is part of Between Here and There, my solo show at the Principle Gallery which opens on June 4.

I wasn’t planning on writing this blogpost for this painting but it seems to work with it. I know I felt an easing of my angst and frustration on seeing this painting. It mirrored my attempts to find that quietness within. So, while I should probably talk about the process or meaning or symbolism in it, I am going to let it stand as is this morning.

It did what I wanted it to do. No, what I needed it to do.

Here’s Peace Piece from Bill Evans if you need some help on your end.

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Harmonia Aeternam

Posted in Event, Literature/ Books, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on May 10, 2021| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Harmonia Aeternam

There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it’s heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: ‘Yes, this is true, this is good.’ This . . . this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don’t forgive anything, because there is no longer anything to forgive. You don’t really love — oh, what is here is higher than love! What’s most frightening is that it’s so terribly clear, and there’s such joy. If it were longer than five seconds — the soul couldn’t endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it’s worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically . . . .

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

I think I understand what Dostoyevsky was describing in the words above. I imagine –well, hope– that most of you have experienced those fleeting seconds where the harmony of everything suddenly becomes evident to you.

All the things that make up the world, the universe, all the planes of existence, and yourself in that rare moment seem to be just where they should be in relation to all other things. It is as though everything is comprised of floating, constantly shifting plates that periodically find themselves in a position where the perfection of eternity is achieved and revealed to the watchful few.

For a few glorious seconds.

Then the plates resume their shifting and harmony seems, at best, just out of reach. Or, in the case of the other extreme, nowhere to be found as the plates shift to a point of chaos and dangerous imbalance.

Maybe that rare moment of eternal harmony –as I know it– is what I am seeing in this new painting that is headed to the Principle Gallery for my annual solo show, Between Here and There, which opens June 4. It has a feeling of great harmony for me, of things being in alignment, in place. And of the Red Tree as a central figure being aware of the unity of time and place in which it finds itself.

I believe I have experienced episodes of those four or five seconds of clarity and I see it in this piece. I am calling this new 24″ by 36″ painting Harmonia Aeternam. I chose the Latin translation for Eternal Harmony because I felt this piece deserved a weightier title.

It’s strong enough to handle it.

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Show’s Over, Folks

Posted in Event, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on May 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Show's Over, Folks

Everything is going to be fine in the end.
If it’s not fine it’s not the end.

― Oscar Wilde

My solo show, Between Here and There, which opens June 4th at the Principle Gallery, has a group of smaller paintings featuring Red Chairs in interior scenes are mostly scenes of the aftermath of prior proceedings. I’ve shown a few here already and thought I would share another today. The one above is titled Show’s Over, Folks.

Kind of like a cop at a crime scene saying, “Shows, Over, folks, Nothing more to see here. Move on.”

I enjoy these pieces in many ways. I like composing and painting them. I enjoy looking at them because while they often make me smile, they often make me think as well. There’s usually a fair amount of atmosphere in them to take in and interpret. Sometimes my take on a piece like this will change from view to view. Perhaps it’s dependent on my own mood at the time that I am looking.

Right now, this one makes me smile. The show might be over for the night and that might be sad but it ain’t the end. Like Wilde’s words at the top– if it’s not fine it’s not the end.

Here’s song that kind of goes with this piece. It’s an old Kinks favorite, Till the End of the Day. With lyrics like: Yeah, I get up/And I see the sun up/And I feel good, yeah/’Cause my life has begun how can things not be fine?

Now, off to work.

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In Retreat (Shelter)

Posted in Biographical, Event, In the Studio, Music, Painting, Process, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- In Retreat (Shelter)

When I flew over the Atlas Mountains in a plane, I realized that their formation-through erosion, geological dramas, the action of winds-was completely independent of our moral anxieties; man is in a kind of cyclone; he builds solid houses to protect and shelter his heart. Outside, nature is nothing but indifference, even terror.

― Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals Were White

As I have written recently, I am neck deep in the  work right now as I prepare for my upcoming solo show, Between Here and There, at the Principle Gallery. It opens on June 4 at the Alexandria, VA gallery that has graciously hosted my solo outings there for the past 22 years.

I am generally excited about each show as it nears but the anticipation to get this work out in the public, out in open air, feels even greater this year. Maybe it’s the events of this past year– a pandemic, an insurrection, the death of my father, a hobbled ankle that has constantly nagged at me, etc– but I felt somewhat distracted in my work over the past year or so. I feel that the work from this time was where I wanted it to be but it came with great effort and a focus that wasn’t always there.

The work from the past several months has been quite unlike that. I am in the midst of a great groove where I feel focused and locked in. It’s one of those rare and wonderful times where the work is coming easily, one piece throwing me instantly into the next, to the point where I will set aside a painting that is 3/4 complete so I can begin the next while the focus and rhythm is still resonating in my brain. I have several such paintings still awaiting completion around the studio as I sit here this morning.

It’s a wonderful feeling, one that I can’t fully explain to you. With this focus, the outside world is diminished, almost blocked out. The work becomes a sort of shelter, a retreat from the darkness and outrage of the world beyond my studio walls. Of the many benefits that being an artist offers, that might be the most valuable for me, the thing that keeps me afloat through thick and thin. The shelter of this work is a life saver.

So good to have it back. I only hope that the show lives up to the feeling. It’s at this point each year that I begin to worry that I am delusional, that my proximity to the work and the process makes me incapable of actually seeing it for what it is.

Contact intoxication, maybe?

But the benefit of being in such a groove is that the work engrosses me so much that it keeps me from fully fixating on this uncertainty. How it is received seems insignificant when it’s like this.

Now that’s the shelter I need.

This leads me to the small piece shown at the top, a 12″ by 12″ canvas that is part of the show, one of the first pieces completed. It set things in motion. It is titled In Retreat (Shelter) which only seems appropriate this morning. I could easily see that Red Roofed structure as my studio or myself as one of those Red Trees that seem to be seeking shelter behind it.

I am going to link this image and post to a song whose chorus has periodically entered my mind over the past 30 or so years. It’s fittingly titled Shelter and is from Lone Justice from back in the mid 1980’s. Led by vocalist Maria McKee, they were very hot for a few years but they couldn’t hold together long enough to reach the potential that so many saw in them. They disbanded in 1987 and Maria McKee went on to a solo career. I thought their two albums were very good and they were regulars on my turntable back in the day. But honestly, I haven’t heard any of their music for probably twenty five years though, as I said, the chorus from this songs pops into my head every now and then. It was produced and cowritten with McKee by Steve Van Zandt, who is known as Miami Steve with Springsteen’s E Street Band, Little Steven with his Disciples of Soul or with his Underground Garage Sirius show, or as Tony’s consigliere Silvio Dante on The Sopranos. You can hear his influence in this song.

Give a listen. Maybe it will help you find some shelter of your own or at least have its chorus pop into your head someday in the future.

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Sacred Awe

Posted in Current Events, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on May 18, 2018| 2 Comments »

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I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!

—Nikos Kazantzakis

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I was all set to write something this morning about stupidity. I noticed that a post I wrote a year ago, On Stupidity, has been getting a large number of views lately. It is about the danger of stupidity, about how even the very highly educated can be stupid, especially in highly charged times when they can fall prey to social and political movements. This coincided with recent thoughts I have been having about how we have devalued intelligence and reason in this nation in recent times, to a point of vilifying the cerebral and elevating moronic behavior.

I was deflated by the whole thing and decided I needed to focus on something other than that, something that dealt with something far more uplifting. I came across the words above from author Nikos Kazantzakis from his book Zorba the Greek. It’s part of a scene where the narrator, a young, bookish Greek man is asked by Zorba, a raw and raucous peasant, to explain the meaning of the stars and the universe that they are sitting beneath. The narrator tries unsuccessfully to put this idea of  Sacred Awe into a form that Zorba will understand. While he doesn’t understand the given explanation, Zorba does recognize the depth of the mystery that he senses in that night sky.

That brings me to this painting, a 36″ by 36″ canvas that I am calling Sacred Awe. It is part of my solo show, Haven, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, opening June 1.

This piece has been hanging in the studio for several months now and I have spent a fair amount of time in the space of this painting. Like Zorba, it is a painting that begs for an answer to the mystery of the stars and the constellations that swirl above. Yet all that is given in response is a sense of awe and nothing more.

And nothing more is needed.

Sacred Awe elevates the mind, stimulates the senses and is the beginning of all art and poetry. In it we connect to a mystic continuum that sees us as small as particles of dust and as large as the great waves of light that pass through the vastness of space.

It is all and it is nothing.

There’s a great meditative  and mysterious quality in this painting, at least for me. It both pleases and puzzles me.

A fitting response to sacred awe.

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Called Home

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , , on May 30, 2017| 1 Comment »

This is a painting that is part of my Truth and Belief show that begins this Friday, June 2 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria. It is 16″ by 20″ on panel and is titled Called Home.

This was one of the first paintings started for this show many months ago, actually back into 2016. It was also one of the last pieces finished in just the last couple of weeks. The two blocks of color, the graded blue-green of the sky and the dark red of the foreground, that make up the bulk of the picture were in place and in my mind the piece felt complete, already communicating emotion.

The interaction between the two large elements and their textures and colors already satisfied me. It was very much like a lot of my earlier work that solely relied on these factors.

I set it aside many months ago and would look at it day after day. I was hesitant to move beyond where it was by adding anything, fearing that it would alter the strong feeling it already emitted for me. I wanted to add elements that would complement that feeling and make it more apparent and accessible for the casual viewer.

I thought about going to my default icon, the Red Tree, that has a variety of meanings in itself.  But it just didn’t seem right for this piece. I settled on one of the Red Roof structures but a taller and more angular version, one that would seem to be trying to break the grip of gravity and reach upward toward infinity. The Red Chair and the path pulled a narrative together for me, one that very much falls in line with how I was seeing the painting in its early stages.

The new elements actually seem to fortify that feeling for me and now when I look at this painting, where I once only fixated on the sky and the foreground, I now see the unity of all the elements in pushing forward an emotional feeling that resonates for me.

It’s all I can hope for in my work…

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Ahead of the Curve

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , , on November 9, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers-- Ahead of the Curve smThis new painting, titled Ahead of the Curve, is a 20″ by 24″ canvas headed in the next few days out to Erie for inclusion in Alchemy, my solo exhibit opening a week from today at the Kada Gallery.  This was one of those paintings that comes quickly at first then is sat aside for quite a long time before I go back at it.  In some of these pieces, it’s because I just don’t see a way forward in it and don’t want to act before I have some inner direction, some small sense  of destination to follow so that the lifeforce I see in it isn’t squandered.

On others,  I reach a point where I see all sorts of possibilities in moving forward and can’t decide which way to move.  I become paralyzed.  Such was the case with this painting.  I built this from the bottom, as I often do, and had allowed the multi-colored mound of fields to grow.  I loved the color and curve of it and the way the smaller green mound jutted upward into the blank canvas.  I thought it was beautiful at that point, with no trees or sky or sun — just a mound with a forked road against a white surface.

So it sat for a few months and I would look at it every day, one day seeing it juxtaposed against a deep and receding field.  The next time I looked I saw I saw it looking down on mountain tops.  But it was the curve of the mound that spoke to me and directed me.  I wanted to create some depth, to move the viewer past the mound and into the scene itself but not so deep that the mound and the Red Tree that would adorn it would be just looked past.

I began to see a slightly lighter curved field with a road continuing through it, creating a closer  curved horizon. The greenish trees on the curved horizon appeared like the  hands on a clock to me, somehow representing the passage of time and I saw a sun or moon on that horizon so that the tree would be above it, as though it were ahead of the sun’s advance.  The Red Tree here is not reactive, bowing to the circumstances the world puts before it.  No, it is proactive, creating its own stance and its own reaction from the world.    It is indeed ahead of the curve.

I think that’s what this is all about, the idea of being proactive in carrying out and maintaining one’s own vision of their world.  Trusting that the sometimes invisible things that they see can be made visible to others.   That might be the definition of a visionary or a fool.  That’s the thing about being ahead of the curve– you may not be around to see which is true.

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