The Music of the Doors, A Statement of Art

This week I have just finished a new painting of an orange tree dangling over Oak Creek in Sedona. A heavy, colorful piece that has all the peculiarity of one of my works - where even the water or the leaves give off the feeling of weighing a hundred tons.

Those who have read my blogs will know that I am a great appreciator of what seem to me to be true and powerful artistic statements, even if the aritsts in question are not oil painters or visual artists. I've long admired the Candyland-like fantasies of the architect Gaudi. And among a legion of amazing artists that I admire and respect are found countless musicians. One of which stands alone, The Doors.

The first and most obvious thing about The Doors is the persistence and the longevity of the music that they created. "Unknown Soldier" could tell the story of an American soldier in Afghanistan just as well as its implied references to soldiers and the militarism and violence of the Vietnam era. The cry "What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister?" that rings out in "When the Music's Over" could well tell the story of an oil-stained gulf coast beach today. It could well be a statement in agony over the destruction of so many irreplacable natural habitats on our planet.

Timelessness demonstrates the power of an artistic statement. Those statements that are too much a product of the time that they were expressed in tend to dissipate with the passing of that particular time. The music of the Doors is powerful because it is an inter-generational commentary by sensitive individuals, who were deeply concerned with the art of what they were saying. Some regard Jim Morrison as an American poet - and I share this feeling. Though it should not be overlooked that Robbie Krieger wrote some of the Doors' best known songs, most notably the immortal "Light my Fire." If you read Morrison's published notebooks and poems, such as "Wilderness" and "The American Night", then you realize that his sensations and words were not always a product of the rational, but in the images that they created, powerful visions were let loose on the consciousness of those who read them in print - and those who heard them in Doors concerts. Morrison was reported to have said that "real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities."

Frequently, when I allowed myself to think about my own paintings in a deeper way - I articulated in my mind a dual standard that I always wanted to strive for. That standard was beauty and originality. I think the Doors and their music also lines up nicely with this idea of a creative aspiration. Of course many of the lyrics and sentiments in the music of the Doors were dark, even darkened Dionysian visions of America and our reality. But I don't count that as ugly - I think that's beautiful. Disturbing images, or even disturbing songs can stir the mind to beauty just as much as an any other cliche of beauty can. And songs like "Summer's Almost Gone" as well as "Crystal Ship" are indeed quite beautiful on the surface. It has seemed to me that the poignant words of Morrison, and the carnavalesque feeling of Ray Manzarek's organ went hand in hand in making songs that could range you for the depths of joy, sadness, confusion, even apocalyptic sensations.

What does the music of the Doors say to artists of all varieties? Primarily, I think it drives home, with punishing insistence, the reality that there really is NO substitute for originality in the creative arts. When you realize how much timeless substance exists in the songs of the Doors, you realize that a true statement of creation - as I've mentioned above, is timeless and inter-generational. So if you wish to hang your hat with the gods of the creative arts - it should be obvious that you ought to aim for the timeless and the original. Take a lesson from the Doors, and the fact that we are still talking about them today.

www.neilmyersart.com

My Favorite Artists Who are Not Oil Painters

This week I am working on a painting of the Rhyne building at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina. I learned just recently that Lenoir-Rhyne, which is the university both I and my wife graduated from - that they are going to be awarding me their "Rising Star Award" for young alumni. After having such wonderful memories of my 4 years at Lenoir-Rhyne, from 1993 - 1997, I told them I would like to give them a painting provided that it would be well displayed. It is not certain as of yet, but it may end up in their library or alumni house.

Just the other day I was talking to the artist Paul Sheldon, and concluded that it was not really an accident that so many artists play music. For many of us it's a way to blow off steam. However it can also feel like what comes out thru music is the same kind of feeling that comes out through the paintings - only the means of expression are different. I've played guitar since I was about 13 years old. When my grandpa David Walters died in 1987, I was given his guitar - which I still have today, and I learned to play on it. He was quite a player and I heard that he used to play on radio shows with his friends.

So thinking about other artists who are NOT oil painters, here are some of my favorites...

1) Justin Rutledge. This guy is a poet with a guitar. I don't know anyone who would dispute this. A number of years ago I heard him on NPR, looked him up, and have been an admirer of his music ever since. Turns out, he enjoys art - and he and I are now friends by correspondence. If you were to describe Justin's music to anyone it would be difficult, because I've never heard anyone like him - but when you hear songs like "This Too Shall Pass", "Penny for the Band" and "Everyone's in Love" etc, it's easy to get hooked. He has a masterful sense of music and melody, with hands down the best lyrics that I've heard in music today. He has a new CD that will be released on May 4th called "The Early Windows", and I urge everyone to check it out. www.justinrutledge.com . You can find him on Myspace and Facebook as well.

2) Ansel Adams. I suspect that there are some people who have a kind of nostalgic view of Ansel Adams, as his images have become so much a part of Americana. But behind those stunning black and white photographs was a deeply complicated, sensitive, and extremely artistic person. I feel that all landscape painters, like myself, should do a study of Ansel and his way of working - his way of framing an image in the picture and his keen eye for granduer both big and small. Some of his images are so clear, so sharp and lucid - and then you can look at the date and see something like "1939" or "1941". It's astounding he got such images from old photographic technology. And his legacy of activism and environmentalism is truly inspirational, as he was one of those people who took it as a personal thing to fight hard for the preservation of our pristine wild places in America. Here is one of America's finest artists period, and I suggest all landscape artists make a good study of Ansel and it will make them better painters. www.anseladams.com .

3) Antoni Gaudi. My main feeling with regards to Gaudi is a true reverence for someone who bucked the conventional in the most extreme of ways - often in one of the most conservative art forms, that of architecture. Gaudi's structures seem to go from candy land childlike visions to the towering and awe inspiring "Sagrada Familia" in Barcelona. The fact that one could make buildings that seemed to undulate and flow like liquid - and that these were viable buildings that could stand the test of time - that is extraordinary. He is a true original.

4) Frank Lloyd Wright. Another true original in the field of archetecture. His homes and structures have frequently given me the feeling that I was looking at buildings that were easily 50, 75, or even a 100 years ahead of their times. Like Gaudi, Wright allowed himself the full reign of his imagination, and even though I hear that some of his buildings are not structurally stable, they leak, and have other problems - as an artist and an individual he was incredibly significant. It also emerges, once you learn a bit about him, that he was not always a nice guy - especially with regards to his family life. But the artist is there, and though I wouldn't want him for a dad and probably not even for a friend, he was unique and therefore notable.

5) KISS. The rock band Kiss has been a cultural phenomenon in America since the early 1970's. The reason I mention them as an artistic inspiration, is that they were the biggest and most flamboyant proponents of a kind of rock-theatre, the idea in general being to heighten the experience of a rock and roll concert by making the performance theatrical. Face makeup, explosions, dripping blood, flaming and smoking guitars, drum risers, etc - Kiss took some of the things they loved best about the act of performance and did it to the n'th degree. And to their credit they have countless fantastic songs that have stood the test of time even without regard to their performance style. I must admit, I've always preferred the original Kiss with members Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss. And I've recently soured a bit on Kiss recently because it has become abundantly clear that Gene Simmons is a massive egoist, who seems much more interested in stuffing dollars into his pockets than being a musical artist. This is not an issue of confidence, mind you. Most of us creative artists have to be stubbornly confident in order to create things. Arrogance, or, one could say, the belief that gravity doesn't affect you anymore - that does not make you a good artist. That makes you a bullheaded primadonna. But despite all this, I rank KISS very high on that list of original creative artists.

6) Carl Sandburg. The poetry of Carl Sandburg took a grip on me when I was in college, and that grip has never let go. His beautiful free verse style seemed to me to be an improvement on the groundbreaking work of Walt Whitman. Sandburg's work is something rooted very firmly in the soil of America, in the city streets of our towns and deeply connected to us generally. His work comes across, to me anyway, as a hybrid of prose and poetry. Sandburg once offered a definition of love as "The touch of two hands that foils all dictionaries." He was a true creative person, and someone who was dedicated to their own vision of poetry.

7) Jack Kerouac. I must admit that I go back and forth on Kerouac's work. And by that I mean that his form of spontaneous prose seemed at times to be rambling and rolling along with so little object as to just be words - and at other times it seemed to be some of the most sensitive and descriptive work since Proust. (Truman Capote once said of Keroauc's work "That's not writing! That's typing...") However the entire spectre of bop prosody was very original. It was at its best in works like "On the Road", "Big Sur" and "October and the Railroad Earth" and was less effective in other works. But it was original and thus retained an inherent power and freshness which has assured Kerouac legacy. Ginsberg, the poet, does get credit in this same spirit of work - but Kerouac was the most visionary of that group of writers. In 2008, a stroke of luck allowed me to see the original "On the Road" scroll that Kerouac wrote the book on - at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico. What a pleasure to see the breathless stream of words that Kerouac produced, that went on to be one of America's legendary books.

8) The Drive by Truckers . Around 2003 a good friend of mine gave me a CD by an Alabama band called the Drive by Truckers. I put it in the player in my car and immediately fell in love. I've since seen DBT twice in concert, met and spoke to Patterson Hood (who has a painting of mine that I sent him awhile back) and have not ceased to be impressed by this roughshod group of Southerners who seem to embody intelligent rock music with biting social commentary. DBT music is often narrative driven and full of stories - quite the antidote to a world full of jingles. Via DBT I also learned of an amazing songwriter who ranks equally good named Jason Isbell. I've spent time with Jason at two of his shows, and he's a great guy and a terrific songwriter. He used to be a member of DBT where he penned such knockouts as "The Day John Henry Died" and "Never Gonna Change," and he now tours and records with his band the 400 Unit.

9) Deanna Johnston. Back in 2005 my wife and I were watching the TV show "Rockstar INXS" and a blond lady stepped up to the mike to do the song "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash. When I heard this lady sing, I sat up straight. This woman had a power, a force like I'd not seen or felt since listening to Janis Joplin for the first time. Her voice had a punch that hit me immediately, subtle, powerful, and memorable. Her later performance of the song "Long Train Running" on the show literally blew the roof off the place. Sometime later I got in contact with Deanna and we have been friends by correspondence for around 4 years. Deanna continues to make great music and I would especially suggest you check out her EP of original songs "GFN", available at www.deannajohnston.net .

These are just a few musical, literary, and architectural artists that inspire me. All of them have a quality of distinction that is important to appreciate in the creative act. I've long believed that the impulse to create is more or less universal in most of us - however some grab a mike, or a guitar, or a drafting board or a pen to express it. Art is vast, for sure, and that's a fertile and beautiful landscape we can all appreciate.

www.neilmyersart.com

30 Minutes with Gary Ernest Smith

This week I am finishing a new painting of Taos pueblo, seen from across the small river that flows in between the two largest buildings at the Pueblo. This is a new view, completely different than the other pueblos that I've painted, and I'll be excited to show it in December at the Tansey Gallery.

I have been thinking a great deal about influences this past month, and I should say that it has been a distinct priveldge to both know and meet countless artists that I truly admire. Among contemporary artists, the two that I would rank of the most importance in influencing my own career would be Jean-Claude Quilici - an artist who readers of my blog will know well - and Gary Ernest Smith. Gary Ernest Smith is one of the finest and most original painters now working in the west. He also shares a passion and a strong sensitivity that I have to color and the thick, earlthlike application of paint.

I did not know of Gary's work until I moved to Arizona in 2003. At that point, I saw his work in a gallery in Tucson and was deeply moved. Here was a painter that seemed to have the soil of the land in his blood. Someone incorporating the various sentiments of Monet, Maynard Dixon, Van Gogh - and who had weaved the feeling those artists brought into something else altogether - something we could simplistically call, his own style. Southwest Art Magazine ran a feature piece on Gary's work not long after I discovered him, only further adding to his many accomplishments.

But me being me, I'm never one to sit back and say "oh that's nice" and never do anything about it - so when I learned that Gary would be present at an opening for the Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson on November 19, 2005, I went there, and though I didn't recognize Gary outright, a friend of mine who worked for the gallery was kind enough to point him out to me. Gary was a wonderfully pleasant man, calm, self assured and almost serene. Looking back at our conversation, it seemed to me that Gary himself exuded some of the qualities of his work. He knew himself well as an artist, and had all the ease and confidence of an artist whose body of work spoke for itself, and whose career was one to be respected.

Gary and I talked about countless things relating to art. I remember telling him that I loved his work because he put viewers of fine art right square in the middle of fields - making them contemplate elemental aspects of the earth, and of all life that springs from the earth. He nodded with satisfaction at this comment. I also told him that even though his style was notably different, that I had something of the feeling, looking at his work, like one has when looking at the best of Edward Hopper's work. Something very American in its sentiment, solid and permanent, which invites the viewer to a quiet contemplation of beautifully cultivated fields; of bales of hay in the sunlight, or raw earth tilled and prepared for planting. I remember when I mentioned Hoppper Gary said something along the lines of "Now you're talking about my kind of artist." And he went on to talk a good deal about Maynard Dixon and how Dixon's work had influenced his own. When I became better acquainted with the work of Maynard Dixon, I too saw the connection. In addition to all that, I realized that one of the things I loved the most about Gary's work was the fact that his work did not repeat the endlessly copied themes of the cowboy painters - Gary Ernest Smith's American West was, and is, a West which seemed to be to be both in the external and internal of us. He had his own vision of the West which continues to stand out against all other painters of his generation.

At some point Gary and I talked and talked until I looked at my watch and realized that I had been hogging his attention for around 30 minutes, (get two committed artists together and they could talk all day, but an artist at his own opening likes to make himself available to chat with various collectors and art lovers) and out of politeness I excused myself, gave him my card and my website address and said "I'm not groping for compliments" , so that he would know I'm not asking him to reciprocate - that would be dishonest. And he very kindly said "Oh, I will anyway!" with a very genuine smile.

I got the idea recently that it would be interesting to have Gary answer a few basic questions about his work for this blog. Dr Sublette and Jaime Gould of Medicine Man Gallery were kind enough to put me in contact with Gary, and he graciously put down some of his thoughts about his work for me. Here are the questions and answers:

1) Your strong focus on fields as subject matter has always been striking to me. Fields seem to be representative of primal life, food, sustenance, emblems of rural life and more. Do you see field subjects in that metaphorical sense? Or do they strike you more as meaningful in the strictly visual sense? I see my field paintings as what they are but also with deeper meaning. they represent the substance of what we are in this life. Our bodies come from the dust and return to the dust. All life springs from the earth. Our source of nourishment comes from the earth. On an other level, I love the vastness of space and the quietness of standing in open fields. I wanted to try to recreate these feelings in these large paintings. I could only see the paintings in this large scale format as I wanted this sense of vastness, of being all consumed by the surroundings. I originally saw the series in my head before I painted them. Not that I saw each piece individually, but I sensed the feelings I wanted to convey. I wanted the hand of man to show in them and how preparing the earth for harvest has created life sustaining rewards as well as beautiful design elements .I knew the size of each was important and to be 6'x8', 6'x10', and up to 16' long.

2.) I have seen a handful of your large works, and when viewing them found myself reminded of something Jackson Pollock said...when he once said "when I am IN my painting". I found myself as a viewer feeling as if I was literally contained within the work I was viewing. These kinds of extremely large format works, to me, hearken back to sensations created in large works by the Abstract Expressionists, such as Pollock, Still, and Rothko; is this sensation of being "in" a painting deliberate? Or is it the reaction produced on Mr Myers alone? I definitely relate to Pollock's statement about "being contained within the work". When I start a large size painting, I start early in the morning and work straight through the first day in organizing and laying out the painting. This time often goes into the night. I take few breaks. It is all encompassing, even stopping is difficult. It is like this creative hunger must be fed. the painting is not most often completed in a day, but the compositional problems and direction is resolved. When I struggle beyond the first day of composing, it eats at me until I resolve it.I carry around imagery in my head all the time. If I'm not painting I'm thinking about it.

3.) Just as you are keenly interested in fields as subjects, it strikes me also that you like the barrier spaces, like ditch grass between rows, or any other kind of wild, overgrown spaces on the edges of fields. Could you talk about that a bit? My first attempts at painting rural America started with iconic imagery of people that worked the fields that I remembered while growing up on a farm in Oregon. The paintings were primarily of a historic nature and of a time when self reliance and hard physical work accomplished the task of making a living in a primarily rural society. My paintings began to evolve, after a few years, and the individuals begin to diminish in size and proportion until the gave way to the landscape. The paintings transformed from yesterday to today. Man's presents is still there in the cultivated land. I began to notice the edges of fields and ditch banks and saw the beauty in the common place and overlooked. I look for subject matter that is so familiar that we look past it and try to find the beauty there in. My work continues to evolve. Discovery leads from one thing to another. It keeps my art fresh and challenging.

4.) I remember, when you and I talked, that you mentioned influences on your work such as Maynard Dixon and Edward Hopper, however the quality of light in some of your works, accompanied by a softly impastoed surface you've created by palette knife - occasionally reminds me a some works by Monet. Have you looked to the Impressionists as influences, or is this a coincidental cross current? I study art all through the ages and appreciate the best of what each generation and society has produced. One cannot incorporate techniques and philosophies along the way. You pick up your favorites like Giotto, Rembrandt, The Pre-Raphaelites,Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, the Nabis, Modigliani, Russell, Remington TheTaos School, Maynard Dixon, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent and the list goes on and on into contemporary times. Some how we take all these influences, put them in the hopper and let them congeal over time, then, following our own path, get to know yourself, develop your skills and something unique of you comes out.I was told by an art professor one time when he I asked about developing a style,"don't worry about a style. Work hard. Build a body of work. Over time your work will be as legible as your hand writing.

5.) You have had a long and very successful career as an artist, is there anything nagging you that you feel you have not done, artistically? To me, what I have not done is the next painting. I stay excited to see the results of a new painting. If I discover something exciting within the process that needs exploring, that's the best. It will often become a series to explore. I don't get to this point by intellectualizing. It most often comes by discovery in something I'm working on or some special insight gained while painting.

6.) What would be the best advice you could offer beginner and mid-career artists who would like to be successful? Develop your skills, study from the great art, be the best artist you can be. Discover what excites you and explore the visual possibilities. A true work of art has all elements, principles, craft and creativity going on within it .If one thing is missing it falls short. It is said that it takes about 50 years after an artist dies to really assess their work. Does it have relevance enough to be remembered? That is for time and others to decide. We can only do our best with sincerity and enjoy the journey along the way as it is truly a rewarding and remarkable journey.

Gary Ernest Smith

* Note from Neil: My sincere thanks to the nice folks at Medicine Man Gallery of Tucson for their assistance, and to Gary Ernest Smith himself for taking his time to answer the curious questions from another artist.

Be sure to check out the beautiful book on Gary's work called "Holding Ground, the Art of Gary Ernest Smith", by Donald J. Hagerty.

Visit Medicine Man Gallery at http://www.medicinemangallery.com/ or drop by to see original works by Gary and countless other talented artists. Images used in this column are copyright Medicine Man Gallery and Gary Ernest Smith 2009.

*Image at the top of this article is "Wild Growth Patterns", original oil painting by Gary Ernest Smith, currently on display at Medicine Man Gallery.

http://www.neilmyersart.com/