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Posts Tagged ‘Winter’

Sunshine Song

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 13, 2025| 6 Comments »

Sunshine Song- At West End Gallery

It is the artist’s business to create sunshine when the sun fails.

–Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, (1904)

I am generally a fan of winter weather. I like colder weather and snow and the quiet it brings. Even so, I have to admit that I am getting tired of it this year. Tired of slipping and sliding on ice, probably because I am still working off a slight concussion from a fall this past weekend that had me stumbling around like a middleweight boxer who had just been hit flush with a haymaker and is forced to take a standing eight count to regain his bearings.  Tired of the oppressiveness of the sky’s constant grayness which matches my mood or that of the country a little too much. Tired of wearing layers and layers of clothing and having to put on crampons (ice cleats) just to walk to the studio.

Even the beauty of the snow is compromised at the moment. Here in the woods, it has no fluffiness or moisture now. The thought of going out and perhaps laying in the snow to make snow angels is gone as the thin layer of snow is hard surfaced with sharp icy edges.

Just want some sunshine. Want some brightness. Something to burn away the grayness of the sky and my spirit. Want to feel its warmth on my skin again. That has been such a rare occurrence this winter.

There is some consolation in that I do, at the very least, have my work. I have the luxury of being able to go into it and make my own sunshine, much like passage above which the Nobel Prize-winning French author Romain Rolland wrote in his best-known work, Jean-Christophe.

It does help to have some capacity to create one’s own sunshine. But it only goes so far. It’s not a self-sustaining perpetual motion kind of thing. It needs some input, some help, some influx of outside energy every so often.

It needs to see and feel the real sun occasionally, even if to simply be reminded that it is still there. With it, the bitterness of cold, the trudge of snow, and the skeletal trees of winter are tolerable.

Okay, enough. The gray light of morning is coming through the studio windows. Barely. I have to go make some sunshine.

Here’s an old song from Donovan about a guy I could use right about now, Sunshine Superman.

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Chilly Scenes of Winter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- In the Light of Stillness 2024

In the Light of Stillness— At West End Gallery

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

–Anne Bradstreet,  Meditations Divine and Moral (1664)

Cold here overnight. Single digit cold with a supper clear sky and a bright moon. The light reflected on the icy crystals that were created by the extreme cold, making it seem like there were shining diamonds scattered in the frosty grass.

It would have been an even more spectacular display if there had been snow on the ground. Even so, it was beautiful as it was.

Finding beauty in the harshness is somewhat akin to the words above of Anne Bradstreet, who was both the first North American writer and woman to have their work published in the 1600’s. Bradstreet (1612-1672) was born to Puritan parents in England and came to the Massachusetts Colony in 1630. To be honest, I don’t know much about her work, which was primarily poetry. But a quick look at her biography shows that while she was cultured and well-educated, she, like most of the early settlers who came here, endured extreme hardship, suffering from mutliple maladies and losses. 

She knew about finding beauty in harshness.

I am sharing a song this morning called Chilly Scenes of Winter. I was going to play Hazy Shade of Winter from Simon & Garfunkel but I somehow always confuse their title with Chilly Scenes of Winter which was a wonderful 1979 movie. It is a small quiet, quirky and funny in a bittersweet way film with a great cast. You can click here or on the title above to see it on YouTube.

That aside, when I searched for the song, Chilly Scenes of Winter, mistakenly thinking I was looking for Hazy Shade of Winter, I came across the song below with that title. It is from an early pioneer of country music, Cousin Emmy. Born in Kentucky in 1903, as Cynthia May Carver, she performed under the name Cousin Emmy from the 1930’s until her death in 1980. She was big country radio star from the 1930’s into the early 1950’s. She drifted into obscurity but found her career revitalized with the folk music movement of the 60’s and the bluegrass revival thereafter.

I don’t know much about Cousin Emmy or her music, but I like this song. Her voice has that kind of flat and plaintive tone to it that is indicative of the music of that part of Kentucky. And it is also a song about finding happiness after suffering loss. In the song she finds a new love after being slighted by her beau who himself is then slighted by his new love. 

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Grant Wood’s Winter (and Mine)

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , on November 10, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Waking up this morning to find the first snow of the year on the ground. Not much, only a dusting, but enough to shine brightly through the darkness at 5:30 AM. Walking over to the studio, I was thinking about the snow scenes that I’ve been painting recently as a loose series. I normally only do these snow paintings once in a while but this series has felt great as I have been doing them, pulling me in immediately in the process. They have a mesmerizing effect that seems to come from the subtlety of the colors underlying the surface.

But today’s snow also reminded me of a couple of works from a favorite of mine, Grant Wood. I thought I’d revisit an entry from back in 2011 where I wrote about his winter scenes. I added a couple more images along with a bit of music title Grant Wood from the Turtle Island String Quartet that pays tribute to the artist.

Take a look and a listen then have yourself a good day.

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January– Grant Wood

I’ve expressed my admiration here for the work of Grant Wood more than once.  I find his imagery compelling, especially the way he creates mood and tension in what seem to be typical, mundane scenes.  His paintings and lithographs often have a wonderful rhythm throughout them that sings to me.  I see these qualities captured beautifully in a series of stone lithographs he created that capture the feeling of the winter months in quiet and moody tones.  The subtle shifts in the grays of the ink recreate the seasonal sense of atmosphere, a point illustrated wonderfully in this piece shown above, January.

February- Grant Wood

This print on the left, February, was completed in 1941 and has an ominous yet beautiful quality about it. I love the rhythm in its simple composition, from the patterned fields of the farm in the background to the placement of the dark figures of the horses to the three strands of barbed wire that cross the picture plane.  The way the dark horse in the foreground plays off the graded darkness in the right of the sky.  Just beautiful.

Maybe the foreboding nature of this print was an omen of Wood’s own death from pancreatic cancer the very next February.  He was born in February and died in February, one day short of his 51st birthday.  I am staggered by the work Grant Wood created in his relatively short life and wonder what might have been had he lived to a ripe old age.  I guess that doesn’t matter when he left such a rich legacy behind as it was.

Below, March is tour de force for the kind of rhythmic elements I’ve been describing.  The sway of the farm structures and the bare tree at the top of the frame.  The wagon and draught horse  riding in on the point of the winding path. The roll of the hills and the staccato rhythm of the fenceposts running upward.  Great stuff.  Instant inspiration…

March- Grant Wood


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