GC Myers- RedTree

Dark Eye of Quiet (2019) “…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking…

Eye to Eye— Now at Principle Gallery I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. –Harry Emerson Fosdick, Riverside Sermons (1958) I came across a page of quotes that resonated strongly with me from Harry Emerson Fosdick, who lived from 1878 to 1969. I had never heard of him and his last name reminded me…

Exiles at Gmeiner Art Center Wellsboro PA January 1997   Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed. –Muriel Rukeyser, The Green Wave (1948) The blessing is in the seed… Everything we accomplish or attempt has a seed, a beginning. My career path as an artist had such a seed, which was when the West…

Inner Sanctum (2002)– Now at Principle Gallery Child, Sister, think how sweet to go out there and live together! To love at leisure, love and die in that land that resembles you! For me, damp suns in disturbed skies share mysterious charms with your treacherous eyes as they shine through tears. There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous. Gleaming furniture, polished by years…

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…

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…

  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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

  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…

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…

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…