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Posts Tagged ‘West End Gallery’

A “Home+Land” Preview

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , , , on July 13, 2015| 1 Comment »

"Heightened Awareness"- GC Myers

“Heightened Awareness”- GC Myers

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

—Hermann Hesse

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Well, my show, Home+Land, is now hanging at the West End Gallery ahead of this Friday evening’s opening reception.  Feedback has been very strong thus far which alleviates some of the jitters that normally accompany the run-up to any of my shows, something I’ve written about here a number of times in the past.

This period between delivering the show and the opening is always one of uncertainty.  Even though I may feel confident and truly satisfied in the work, in this time period a lingering doubt always seems to rise up that perhaps my perception of the work will not jibe with that of the general public.  After many years and many of these shows, I know this an irrational fear, that how others see the work is beyond my control and so long as I feel that the work speaks honestly and confidently for me there is nothing to worry about.

And that is something that I definitely feel the work does in this show.  I feel completely invested in this show with a certainty that this group is an authentic representation and extension of my work and my self.  For better or worse, it just feels honest.

This was something I found to be true when I was putting together the short video preview below as I wanted to keep it shorter and didn’t want to include everything.  It was difficult deciding which pieces to include and which to leave out– each would add something and none which be out of place.

But in the end I felt pretty good about the group I chose and hope you’ll take a moment to decide for yourself.

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It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2015| 3 Comments »

GC Myers Seeker of Light smThis is another new painting from the Home+Land show that opens this coming Friday at the West End Gallery.  It’s  16″ by 20″ on panel and is titled Seeker of Light.  It’s a painting that drew my attention on a daily basis in the days before it left the studio, the blue tones in it satisfying a personal desire for that color that often comes over me.

There’s something in that blue that, for me, creates a sort of color intoxication.  At the end of a day when I have been working up close, only inches away, I find myself smitten with the color, wanting to just keep painting endlessly with that color.  I’ve talked with people in the past about this, trying to describe how I actually have to consciously pull myself away from the color or it would engulf my entire body of work.  It’s pull for me is that strong.

And even though the whitish light of the moon seems to be the center of attraction here, I think it is pull from the blues that is the strength of this piece.  At first glance, it’s a scene that should feel wintry and cool but the blue tones here have a deceptive warmth, supported by the underlying reds and violets, that belies the natural coolness of the color.  It gives it a welcoming feel, inviting you in to follow the lines running in toward the light.

There’s so much more I could say about this painting but I won’t as it no doubt says it best for itself in the eyes of the viewer.

But that does lead us to this week’s Sunday morning music which has a reference to that color blue.  This song is from Van Morrison when he was starting his career with the Irish band, Them, back in the musical British Invasion of the mid-60’s.  Though they had a short life as a band, only about two years, Them produced some of the most enduring music from that era including the classic Gloria and  Here Comes the Night along with this cover of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue written by Bob Dylan.  This song, with its haunting lead in,  certainly doesn’t feel its age, almost 50 years old, to me.

Give a listen and have great Sunday.

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“Home+Land” in the Gallery

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on July 11, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers - Heart+Land

GC Myers – Heart+Land

Well, this morning has been a quiet one as I knock about in my studio that now feel empty after delivering the work for my solo show, Home+Land, to the West End Gallery.  There’s a sense of relief and befuddlement hanging in the air.  Over the past year I have had deadlines always hovering ahead of me, always something  waiting to be done.  So when a rare moment without a deadline pops up, it takes me a while to figure out how to deal with this bit of free time.  But I will find a way through this pesky free time.

At the West End, they were planning on hanging the show last night and this morning so that it would be available for previews by this afternoon and I’m eager to see how it looks.  It’s a pretty big show and I think it will be show with a lot of oomph in the space but I can’t be sure until it’s on the walls.

One piece that I think will look great in the space is the painting at the top, Heart+Land, a large 36″ by 36″ canvas. The size coupled with an opulently warm feel and a sky that seems to reach out to you makes it a piece that is hard to ignore.  At least, that’s how I feel.

I know when it was in the studio it was a piece that drew my eye on a regular basis.  For a while, I had this piece along with several others set up in the basement of my studio in an area where I do my daily workout.  I found this painting a great one to focus on while exercising, allowing myself to get lost in the layers of texture and the many shapes throughout the piece.  Very meditative. It made my workout so much easier.  I’m going to miss this piece for that reason and many others.

Anyway, the show is in the gallery.  Please stop into the West End Gallery to preview the work and if you’re in the Corning area on Friday evening, please stop in and say hello.

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Believer

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on July 10, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Believer smWe have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

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This new painting, a 24″ by 30″ canvas that is part of my Home+Land show at the West End Gallery, is a piece that really has strong appeal for me personally.  Maybe it’s the warmth in its colors and the way its forms and textures flow together.  Or maybe it just has something to say to me.

I call this piece Believer and, for me, I saw differing forms of belief throughout the piece, as seen in the obvious reference to religious belief as represented in church and steeple.

The farm and silo I saw as a symbol of a belief in the earth and one’s own self-sufficiency, a belief centered on common sense and knowledge.  I saw the Red Tree as the believer, as FDR said in 1940, that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.  It is a symbol here of the dreamer, the explorer.  The believer of a better future.

The radiating sun represents a constant for all of these beliefs.  We all believe that the sun will come up each day.  It has always done so and I believe that it will probably continue that way for the foreseeable future.

I guess the point is that, unless we have abandoned all hope in ourselves and this world, we all have a belief system of some sort, whether it is in our own god (or gods) or in science and knowledge or in a better world beyond the horizon.

As for myself, I believe I’ll have another cup of coffee…

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The Aerialist

Posted in Motivation, Neat Stuff, Photography, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2015| 1 Comment »

Grand Prismatic Spring Yellowstone Wyoming Photo by Jassen T.I am in the last full day of preparing my work for my show, Home+Land, for the West End Gallery before delivering it tomorrow. This last day is always one filled with a great sense of relief and just a bit of anticipation as I begin to envision the whole of it in the gallery.  Over the last several days, I’ve began to feel very good about this group and am eager to see it hanging together.

But this morning I didn’t want to think about it at all and scanned some of my favorite sites to see what’s new.  Well, new to me.  I went back to the National Geographic site and came across some photos by a San Francisco based photographer named Jassen T.  I wish I had more info to share on him but his work on the Nat Geo site is great, mainly aerial imagery including the one above, a shot looking down on Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.  Love the jewel-like colors and the organic flow of the forms.  Just a great image.

Another of his aerial shots is the one at the bottom of a salt marsh in the San Francisco Bay.  It has a very painterly look, reminding me in some ways of another Bay area artist, Wayne Thiebaud.  I find myself constantly moving my eyes back to this image, taking in the forms.  I know what it is in reality but my mind wants to continuously interpret in many other ways.  It just sparks all sorts of thoughts which must be the sign of a good image.

Thanks, Jassen T., for the great images.  They were very refreshing this morning.  Hope to see more of your work in the future.

Salt Marsh San Francisco Bay Photo by Jassen T.

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Quote of the Week: Pasternak on Art

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on July 8, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers-Foundling smArt is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.

—Boris Pasternak

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I think Pasternak (author of Doctor Zhivago) is really spot on with with this terse definition of art.  Art at its core is, for me, an attempt to affirm our existence and the existence of that life force within us.

I really like that term that Pasternak uses here– ray of power.  That description of the force that drives all living things jibes well with that animating force that I try to find in my own work, that indeterminate quality that makes a static thing seem to take on a life of its own.

How and if it comes through in the work is the interesting thing for me.  Sometimes, despite my extreme efforts, I cannot find that life force.  Maybe I should say because of my extreme efforts instead of despite.  Sometimes it seems as though trying to consciously find that thing prevents it from being found. It often finally appears when I don’t focus on that aspect and lose myself in the process of actually painting– the colors, lines and forms before me.

It’s as though you don’t find it.  It finds you.

I chose the painting at the top, Foundling, to illustrate this post before I wrote that last line but it fits so well with the idea of that ray of power as well as the idea of it finding you.  This painting, a 24″ by 36″ canvas, is, of course, from my upcoming show, Home+Land, opening July 17 at the West End Gallery.

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Dissolve Revisited

Posted in Painting, tagged , , , on July 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Dissolve small

Another painting from my upcoming West End Gallery show, Home+Land, is the not so new painting above called Dissolve.  After it was completed and sent to a gallery, I lost track of it and thought that it had been sold.  But in fact it was on loan to adorn a design center in the DC area and was recently returned.

I was excited when I learned that it was still around because there were so many things in this piece that appealed to me.  I knew immediately that I wanted to show it in this show as it fits in so many ways.

Here’s what I wrote about this piece a few years back when the piece was completed:

This painting called Dissolve is another in the series I’ve been working in for the past few months.  This 24″ by 36″ piece is based very much on the same format as Like Sugar In Water, [a large 36″ by 60″ painting from that same time, shown below].  Both paintings grow from the bottom where they begin in structured blocks of color.  The path cuts through, rising from the geometry of the fields up to a plain that flattens out.  The path continues by the red-roofed house and is not seen again as it enters the broad yellow field that runs to the horizon.  The path’s upward movement is continued in  the spreading bare limbs of the distant tree which merges into the broken mosaic of the sky.

GC Myers- Like Sugar In Water

GC Myers- Like Sugar In Water

It’s a simple concept and a simple composition, dependent on the complexity of the color and the placement of the elements in order to transmit feeling and emotion.  These simpler compositions, when done so that they work well, are often very potent purveyors of feeling and are among my persoanl favorites.  The stripped down nature of the scene takes away all distractions and centers the essence of the work in the willing viewer’s eyes, making it very accessible to those who connect with it.  And that is much of what I hope for my work- to create work that stirs strong emotion within a seeming;ly simple context.

Maybe there’s more to it than this.  I can’t be sure if my thoughts and interpretations are any more valid than those of a first-time viewer.  That’s the great thing about art– there are no absolutes.  It’s also the thing about art that scares a lot of people.  Many people fear the gray areas of this world, of which there are many,  and desire absolute belief and knowledge in all aspects of their lives.   But art most often  lives in the ambiguity, the uncertainty,  of those gray areas and that can be unsettling to some. 

 Dissolve seems absolute and certain at first glance but is all about the gray areas of our world and our belief.  At least as I see it…

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Beginning to See the Light

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on July 6, 2015| 3 Comments »

Beginning to See the Light smHere’s another new painting that is part of my upcoming show, Home+Land,at the West End Gallery, opening July 17.  This 12″ by 12″ canvas is titled Beginning to See the Light, which sort of continues a theme from yesterday’s post as the title is also the title of a Velvet Underground song.

While I was working on yesterday’s post and listening to some music from the Velvets, I kept looking at this piece and when this song came on it just seemed right as a title for it in the moment.  It’s not that the lyrics necessarily jibed well but just the idea of that moment of realization that the title possesses seemed right because this is what I see in this piece– arriving at a moment of understanding.  The world seems calm and right but vivid in that moment.

Here’s the song that gave me the title.  It’s coupled with some absurdist/avant garde imagery from a 1968 Soviet film, The Color of Pomegranates.  I don’t know how relevant this is to the song but it’s kind of interesting?

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Some Kinda Love

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on July 5, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers-Heartshare smSunday morning on a holiday weekend but no holiday here in the studio yet.  No, not for another week or so as I get ready for my Home+Land show that opens in just under two weeks, on July 17 at the West End Gallery.  It’s been crazy busy the last couple of weeks but I am seeing the results coming clearer now and I think it has a real pop to it, one that has me getting excited to see the work hanging in the gallery.

There’s just something about seeing the work spaced on the gallery wall and not propped up in various positions around the studio that makes me see it as something apart from myself, something in and of itself.  It’s a bittersweet but exciting moment for me when I see a painting that has taken on personal meaning for me in the studio, like the one shown above, Heartshare, on the wall of the gallery.

It really lays claim to its own identity at that point and my time with it is close to an end.  It has become what it is and takes on the characteristics of the viewer, perhaps symbolizing things that I never saw or imagined in it myself.  That’s the mystery and beauty of this thing called art– sometimes one thing takes on many different meanings for different people.  There are no absolutes.

Well, it is Sunday morning and time for a little music so I thought I’d carry through on the theme of the painting at the top.  Here’s a song  called Some Kinda Love from the Velvet Underground.  Formed by Lou Reed and John Cale, the Velvets were one of the most influential bands of the mid-60’s.  A good rhythm to start your Sunday.  Have a great day.

FYI: The painting at the top, Heartshare, is 16″ by 20″ on canvas and is part of a series of paintings I’ve done over the last several years based on the myth of Baucis and Philemon.

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4th of July, Asbury Park

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , , , on July 3, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Madam Marie Asbury ParkI am coming into the last week of preparing my solo show, Heart+Land, which opens July 17 at the West End Gallery.  It’s at this point every year, after the second show in a matter of a couple of months, that I begin to feel a bit worn down.  I really see it in trying to write the blog.  A lot of mornings I find myself sitting here just staring at the screen and feel that my mind is blank as well, as though the wheels in my mind feel like they will never turn again.  I am preoccupied with with those pieces that still need work and other tasks that are waiting for me just out of my sight.  Out of sight but not out of mind.

So, I thought I would start the holiday a day early with a little music and one of my favorite Springsteen songs.  Some know it as Sandy from the name of the girl to which Bruce’s character is singing but it’s actually titled 4th of July, Asbury Park from his 1973 (yes, it was that long ago) album The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.  It’s a song that immortalized the Jersey boardwalk culture of that time, like the fortune teller Madam Marie whose real life shop is shown above, with its bittersweet lamentation about lost love and outgrowing the lures of youth’s easy pleasures.

So, I am giving it a listen then heading back to those tasks that are beginning to tap their toes with impatience.  Have a great 4th of July.

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