GC Myers- RedTree

The Burning Secret  Let nothing be called natural In an age of bloody confusion, Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanized humanity, lest all things Be held unalterable! –Bertolt Brecht, The Exception and the Rule (1930), Prologue I’ve had this verse in my draft files for some time. Around two years, actually. I haven’t shared it up until now even though it felt applicable then. The…

As In a Dream— At West End Gallery The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials — in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at…

Winged Victory 1995 I like to live always at the beginnings of life, not at their end. We all lose some of our faith under the oppression of mad leaders, insane history, pathologic cruelties of daily life. I am by nature always beginning and believing and so I find your company more fruitful than that of, say, Edmund Wilson, who asserts his opinions, beliefs, and knowledge as the ultimate…

Jimmy Lee Sudduth (1910-2007) –Nativity Scene ”– you know, I’ve either had a family, a job, something has always been in the way but now I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this place, a large studio, you should see the space and the light. for the first time in my life I’m going to have a place and the time to create.” no baby, if you’re going to create you’re going to create whether you work 16…

The Regeneration— At West End Gallery What good are all the objects in the universe, if there is no subject? It isn’t that mankind is all that important. I don’t think that Man is the measure of all things, or even of very many things. I don’t think Man is the end or culmination of anything, and certainly not the center of anything. What we are, who we are, and where we are going, I do not know,…

RedTree: Continuum– At West End Gallery The future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory. –Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997) I know that Eckhart Tolle is right with the statement above. But like they say, easier said than done. I…

Eyvind Earle- Santa Ynez Memory (1998) Then very slowly I go to slightly lighter colors until little by little, the forms begin to take shape and I start to see what is happening. Since I never plan in advance, I simply let myself be led by instinct, taste and intuition. And it is in this manner that I find myself creating visions that I have never before imagined. And little by little certain…

Exiles: Cain 1995 From the moment that man believes neither in God nor in immortal life, he becomes ‘responsible for everything alive, for everything that, born of suffering, is condemned to suffer from life.’ It is he, and he alone, who must discover law and order. Then the time of exile begins, the endless search for justification, the aimless nostalgia, the most painful, the most heartbreaking…

Time Reverberation— At the Gmeiner Art Center— Show Ends Today! Imagination, as opposed to fantasy, is the ability to see the other thing, what one might call, to use those old-fashioned words, nature, reality, the world… Imagination is a kind of freedom, a renewed ability to perceive and express the truth. –Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature…

Clear Voice–At Gmeiner Art Center– Shows Ends Sunday Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours. ~Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927) Very tired this morning. Yesterday was a busy day out of the studio and by late afternoon I was wiped out. This…

Eye to Eye— Now at Principle Gallery When I have been hungry or scared or broke, I called on my friends—agents of the Lord, you might say—and I received from them food and drink, comfort and kindness, money or a bed to sleep in for a time. I would have discarded—as you should also—anyone who heard a plea from a friend or a fellow human and offered only a prayer. We are, as Martha Graham always…

Studio 5:30 PM August 5, 2026   Every moment instructs, and every object; for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence until after long time. –Ralph Waldo Emerson, essay Nature (1836) I put what I believe are…

I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.  In short, I allow faults to appear, the better to fix my sensations. –Claude Monet, 1912 Much of what is below was first posted here back in 2012, I’ve shared it several time over the intervening…

Pondering Solitude— Now at the Gmeiner Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself. ― Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023), Discussions on Youth (1999) The other day I wrote about how art creates the artist, how the artist’s being is ultimately…

To seek visions, to dream dreams, is essential, and it is also essential to try new ways of living, to make room for serious experimentation, to respect the effort even where it fails. –Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976) In some of my very earliest attempts at painting I used photo references, something I never use now. The photo that these two early…

RedTree: Continuum– At West End Gallery Every creative person is a duality or a synthesis of contradictory aptitudes. On the one side he is a human being with a personal life, while on the other side he is an impersonal, creative process… Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends,…

Echoes of Time- At West End Gallery People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my…