GC Myers- RedTree

Concerning the Work of Artist GC Myers

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Draining Anxiety

Only Now (2012) – Now at the Principle Gallery It has been well said that our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength. –Charles Spurgeon, The Salt-Cellars (1889) I took it easy on Sunday after getting home from my short excursion into Alexandria for Friday’s opening of my show, Flow, which now hangs at the Principle Gallery. I was bone-tired in…

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Meaning

In the Weave of Time– Now at Principle Gallery Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out … and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. –A. E. Housman, The Name and Nature of Poetry, Cambridge lecture May, 1933 One of the things I worry about in the weeks leading up to a show, as well as at my openings and Gallery Talks, is…

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Back on My Own Roof

  Give Me Light– At Principle Gallery Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping. –Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way (1992) Back in the studio this morning after returning from Friday’s opening for Flow at the Principle Gallery. It went very well, a good opening with the folks there providing plenty of energy, for which I was grateful. I might even call it a…

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Thank You!

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. –G. K. Chesterton, A Short History of England (1917) I am writing this on my phone so it will be brief since I spend 3 times as much time correcting the text as it takes to write. Thank you. Plain and simple. Had a wonderful time at last night’s opening of my show at the Principle Gallery.…

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'Flow" Opens Today

Flow– At Principle Gallery Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the…

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Details, Details, Details...

A New Cornucopia detail For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance. –Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) I began writing this post a while ago about a painting, A…

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Archaeology: The Now and Then

Detail from Archaeology: The Now and Then — Now at Principle Gallery Of all the priceless objects left behind, this is what we rescue. These artifacts. Memory cues. Useless souvenirs. Nothing you could auction. The scars left from happiness. –Chuck Palahniuk, Diary (2003) Archaeology: The Now and Then – Now at Principle Gallery This short passage from a Chuck Palahniuk novel spoke loudly to me…

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The Attunement

The Attunement– Now at Principle Gallery A thrumming of piano-strings beyond the gardens and through the elms. At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable…

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A Look Back: Inner Sanctum

Inner Sanctum (2002)– Now at Principle Gallery The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens into that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was a conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach. –Carl Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934)  Perhaps the room in this 2002…

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A Way Forward

A Way Forward (2012)- Now at Principle Gallery If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold. –Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting opinion in Jay Burns Baking Co. v. Bryan (1924) The painting above, A Way Forward, was completed in 2012. It left the studio almost as soon as it was done so I only lived with it for a very brief time. Since it left, with only its image to…

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Great Question

  It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. –Eugène Ionesco, Discoveries (1969) Most of you who have read this blog for any amount of time know that I ask a lot of questions and provides few, if any, answers. This sense of wondering and not knowing provides an uncertainty that I have come to feel is the driving force behind my work. That is to say that my work often provides the…

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A Look Back: Tango

Tango (1999)– At the Principle Gallery You that love lovers, this is your home. Welcome! In the midst of making form, love made this form that melts form, with love for the door, soul the vestibule. Watch the dust grains moving in the light near the window. Their dance is our dance. We rarely hear the inward music, but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless, directed by the one who teaches us, the…

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Placid Pondering

Placid Pondering (2012)- Now at Principle Gallery Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams, Lover of loneliness, and wandering, Of upcast eye, and tender pondering! Thee must I praise above all other glories That smile us on to tell delightful stories. For what has made the sage or poet write But the fair paradise of Nature’s light? — John Keats, I Stood Tip-Toe Upon a Little Hill (1816) As I…

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Concordia

Concordia (2015) –Now at Principle Gallery When our universe is in harmony with man, the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as beauty. –Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man {1931) When I finished this larger painting back in 2015, it was its feeling of peace and harmony that first hit me. That feeling in this piece hasn’t left me in the past decade. I saw the Red Tree here as both an…

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Proud to Be an Islander

Islander— Now at Principle Gallery No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell…

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In My Life/ Solitude and Reverence

Solitude and Reverence– Now at Principle Gallery, Alexandria I came here to be for all and with all, and what I do today in my solitude will be echoed tomorrow by the multitude. What I say now with one heart will be said tomorrow by thousands of hearts… –Kahlil Gibran, A Tear and a Smile (1914) Back in the studio after a day spent delivering the work for my show, Flow, to the Principle…

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Delivery Day/ Passenger

  Flow– Coming to Principle Gallery Today! My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger. –Aldous Huxley, Adonis and the Alphabet (1956) On the road this morning, heading down toward Alexandria to deliver the work for my upcoming solo show at the Principle Gallery. This year’s…

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