A Defense of the Arts in America

Henry Miller once wrote "A corn fed hog has a better life than an American artist."  Years ago, that comment made me laugh when I read it.  However, times have changed.  What was humor then carries a dark cloud of serious disregard now.  The current President of the United States is someone for whom it may be said that his only serious connection to the arts may well be when he used his foundation's money to buy a portrait of himself.  His recent budget proposals reflect not only a disregard for the arts, but outright contempt.  Because of this, I wish to offer this defense of the arts in America.

When White House budget director Mick Mulvaney recently stepped forward to defend President Trump's current budget proposal, he stated that this was a "Hard power budget."  Not a surprising use of words when one considers President Trump's thuggish use of machismo and power language to cower his critics.  How on earth might people who believe in "hard power" ever be convinced that their proposals to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to zero are bad proposals?  What it says, is that those who ought to be the stewards of the culture of these United States choose instead to invest nothing in it.  It says, in very plain terms, that the great many artists, writers, performers and so many others in the creative professions - are worth nothing to this administration.

It is a strange thing to think that an oil and energy companies should enjoy an estimated 4 billion in tax subsidies - essentially saying to taxpayers that we ought to subsidize their business...but to the "Hard Power" advocates in the Trump administration, if a tiny fraction of that money is invested in American Arts, it is clearly a waste.  This kind of mentality betrays the social Darwinist underpinnings of some strains of Alt-right philosophy.  To them, the arts and arts related businesses should be allowed to fail if they can't make it on the free market.  In the majority of cases, if an gallery doesn't make it, it does indeed fail.  The law of the jungle still holds true.  But my argument lies primarily in the fact that our government sees our arts programs as a needless extravagance (even though they represent a minuscule fraction of our overall Federal spending), and I see our arts spending as absolutely critical to the emotional and cultural lives of the American people.

Winston Churchill, who enjoyed making paintings in his spare time, was once asked to cut arts funding during World War II.  And he famously replied "Then what are we fighting for?"  Clearly the legendary British leader saw that he and others were not just fighting Hitler in the conventional sense - they were fighting for the preservation of English and Western culture.  And that means, among other things, the preservation of their arts.

The creative arts are different than other forms of productivity.  The creative arts represent the various arenas concerned primarily in the cultivation of a meaningful inner life for the artists and the broader culture.  The creative arts are deeply concerned with the search for meaning and expression in human life.  What would this world be without them?  What kind of grey, dystopian society would result if there were none of the creative arts to "wash the dust of life away", as Picasso once remarked?

I walked through a hotel just yesterday and found myself thinking about this problem.  If there were no artists, there would be no art on the walls.  Even that cheesy kind of low grade graphic art - the kind which is made to simply match the curtains and fit the decor of a space without upsetting anything.  Take the art of the walls and immediately you would have a different space.  If there was no art there would also be no music.  If there was no music there would be no pleasant sounds making even a short elevator ride more relaxing.  Take away the arts and there would be no real literature to read at the end of the long day at work.  Your suitcase would be lighter but your heart would be duller.  Take away the arts even further and those who decorate the interior of a structure would simply vanish - and the interior of our most pleasing buildings would just be gray walls.  No colors.  No life. Pure function.  The ceiling would keep the rain off your head.  The air conditioning would still work. But you would walk into a colorless, music-less, artless building.  Your senses would be reduced to dull functionality.  A lack of even the smallest reaction.  Emptiness.  And this is only what no art might do to one building...not forgetting either, the creativity in the making of truly original architectural wonders.

What would result in a world with no art would be a planetary North Korea.  Bland and tasteless - repressive and soul crushing.  Though we should not forget that authoritarian leaders are more than happy to bring out art in the service of their own personal goals - so even there art survives, but only in slavish service to the state.  And that, is more like no art at all.  North Korea would not survive if it had its equivalent of Delecrox's "Liberty Leading the People" or Picasso's "Guernica."

                         "Liberty Leading the People" by Eugene Delacroix

As it stands here in the United States of 2017 we still have our full freedom of expression.  For that, I and many others, are deeply grateful.  Luckily, the founding fathers put our freedom of expression out of the reach of greedy men of the moment who might snatch it away - and destroy it forever.  Yet, my primary argument is with the contention that the U.S. government gives, by way of this proposed budget, that the arts mean NOTHING in terms of funding.  It says to the little boys and girls who are drawing with their crayons and spreading joy in the world - that a future where they hold a paintbrush, or act in a play, or write a book - it is not worth having.  Therefore, commit yourselves to something else.  Art is not worth it.

But we all know this isn't true!  It isn't true at all.  When we think of some of the great cities of the world, it is not an accident that such cities are often bound up with having profound museums, amazing theaters and gilded concert halls.  All the products of beauty and culture that have long contrived to make the dull regularity of daily life bearable for city people and country people alike.  I myself spent time in France and love that country very much.  It is interesting that being an artist in France has all the regularity of being an accountant or bureaucrat.  Art permeates the culture in France.  I remember sitting in bars and talking to random people who loved the poetry of Jacques Prevert.  Average people in France always had their favorite painters - and France claims its artists with great pride.  That comes from a culture that believes that art informs the life of the people.  And that the life of the people will ultimately be better if all segments of public life - including the government, acknowledge that art is worth something.

The creative arts are also important to American culture because we have often been a culture of endless work,  little play, and full throttled mass production.  American artists of all kinds have the ability to hold a mirror up to the culture and show the culture to itself.  And if we allow our government to say that art is worth nothing, then we are saying that we don't want to see what our artists may wish to say about our country, its people, and its culture.  We don't want to hear the poetry of Juan Felipe Herrer or we don't want to see "The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, September 11, 2001" by Graydon Parrish.  We shirk from holding the mirror up to our culture.  Could it be that we are afraid of what we will see?

"The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, September 11, 2001" Graydon Parrish (Used with permission of the artist)

At the end of the day, even if the cultural argument fails, it would seem to me that we should be able to understand that art jobs are JOBS.  I would think that that kind of ruthlessly capitalistic calculus would work on someone like President Trump.  All the mythos, all the things that Americans tell themselves about being free spirits - about working with their own hands, being independent and building businesses...all these things ought to ring a few bells with those who advocate for the rights of businesses - including arts businesses.  But strangely this doesn't seem to be so.  An arts job is seen as expendable - even worthy of elimination in the eyes of those formulating the Trump budget.  And this leads me to believe that they would prefer artists be silent - or complicit, which may be worse.  They fear the image of America in the age of Trump - and they would prefer to not have the nasty inconvenience of serious reflection in an age of demagoguery and deep political fractures.

Most artists would never contend that we are worth more than any other productive member of society.  But we would contend that we are worth as much as the rest.  And so if the United States government can spend billions subsidizing car companies - or billions subsidizing oil companies, or unthinkable amounts of money on our military - it would seem the smallest thing in the world to set aside a minuscule fraction of the federal budget for the propagation arts and culture.  The fact that the Trump administration doesn't even do this means that they not only do not value the arts - they mean to put the arts through the floor.  The message is clear.  Clearer still when we can place an order for 8.5 billion dollars worth of F-35 jets, and no serious public debate occurs on the issue.  Yet if we ordered 87 instead of 90 F-35s, we could fund the entirety of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  The Presidential budget says, in effect, that these precious arts and cultural endowments are not worth 3 airplanes for the already mighty United States Air Force.

Though it may be hard to imagine it now - in Renaissance Italy there were cities and governments that placed tremendous value on the arts.  In Florence alone, city fathers were constantly scheming to get the finest artists of the day, artists such as Michelangelo, Botticelli, Leaonardo, Raphael, and many others - to create what today are some of the finest works in all of western civilization.  They eagerly awaited the great things their artists might portray about the history and accomplishments of their cultures.  Artists reaped the benefits of lucrative commissions, and their cities had great works of beauty and meaning brought forth in front of delighted citizens.  Today, many countries around the world - even with the stresses that most governments endure in trying to meet the needs of their citizens -  countries around the world still support their arts with small fractions of their budgets.  Even further, many countries have ministers of culture - who are themselves representatives in their respective governments as advocates for arts and culture.  And what about the United States?

Perhaps, as we go forward to resist this denigration of the arts by the Trump administration - perhaps a new rallying cry should be the previously mentioned phrase "Arts Jobs are American Jobs!"  A powerful thing to say because it is completely true.

Arts jobs ARE American jobs.

Conservatives, Progressives, Independants and all others - all groups enjoy and benefit from the arts.  So why aren't arts jobs held in higher regard?  Why is a subsidy to a huge multinational corporation considered essential, but not the pennies on the dollar spent for the arts?  The very fact that I have had personal experience with Conservatives, Progressives, and others buying my own work tells me that art in fact is a unifying force in an age of deep political divisions.  We need even the temporary healing that arts can bring in our culture.

We don't want to be an aesthetic North Korea.  We simply believe that the richest country in the world can do in peace what Churchill insisted on preserving even during a war.  Artists in America only want to be productive members of our society.  And we only want a government that recognizes that we are....just that.

Productive members of society.

This is our hope.

www.neilmyersart.com 

Fall in the Arizona Desert

The Arizona desert, with its brutal heat and unforgiving landscape, is unlike other places which are so often associated with what is ideal and beautiful in the outdoors.  In Arizona we live for the Fall and Winter seasons - we live for that relief that comes when the days are still warm and the nights are cool.  The few deciduous trees that line certain streams and valleys turn orange and red and drop their leaves.  Snakes and scorpions find somewhere to hide, and the great outdoors isn't quite the fearful place it is for so much of the hot part of the year.  And for the artist, it is a chance to be outside and truly experience the desert without the searing heat of the sun cutting short your plans.

The painting above is one of my recent favorites.  It is called "When the Desert Comes to Life" (It is a 24 x 30 inch oil on canvas, currently available at Cobalt Fine Arts in Tubac ).  This painting catches a very unique moment, usually in October, when we get a fall bloom of flowers in some of the lowlands in Catalina State Park.  They bloom below these magnificent stands of Giant Saguaros - giving a splash of color, and even a sense of the revival of vegetal life as winter approaches.  The fall blooms in Arizona are very distinct.  Not perhaps as striking as the spring blooms - but still very present - creating scenes of pictorial power and curiosity, as winter approaches.  I took the image this painting was made from on the Sutherland trail, only a few feet away from where I painted another one of my best paintings - that one titled "The Flowers of Fall."  Many of my works feature spring scenes and colorful hues - and thankfully, our fall blooms in Arizona also give an artist to explore these landscapes with the same contentment in his brush than that which he or she feels in April or May.

I have often said that when you are in the presence of Giant Saguaros, they feel like a plant that is almost anthropomorphic.   You can stand on a hillside of Saguaros and if you listen to the wind whipping through their needles and allow them to tower over you - you have the curious feeling that you are not alone.  Nature, through these towering cacti, looks down approvingly on these desert fields carpeted with flowers - rising up to greet the cool nights and the tepid air of winter.  These same plants and their ancestors would have towered over the Hohokam and the Apaches as they made their way through these harsh lands - and they too must have felt the power of these ancient plants.

Though I realize that the feeling may be only in my own mind - I doubt that this is so.  The feeling that every stroke, even one of an expressionist painting created in 2016, is connected to all those who felt strongly in the past - and who tried to represent their scenes with whatever methods they could.  Standing on Signal Hill outside Tucson with my older son, I made the connection between those ancient artists who carved petroglyphs into a barren, rocky hill protruding up from the desert - and people like me, pouring their souls into new works of art and new expressions with roots in the very same place.

I encourage everyone to do your part and support the arts in your community.  I will be a part of a Luminaria show next month in Tubac, and have works on display at Cobalt Fine Arts - which is a great place to visit during either the Fall Arts Festival in Tubac, the Luminaria show, or the Festival of the Arts in February.  Happy fall - I hope we can all hit the trails and get outside - for our health, for our sanity, and for our art...

Neil

Neil Myers show at Cobalt Fine Arts during the Luminaria nights

http://cobaltfinearts.com/events.php

Tubac Festival of the Arts

http://tubacaz.com/event/58th-annual-tubac-festival-of-the-arts/2017-02-09/

 

Eternal Spring and the Search for Color and Meaning

                    "The Symphony of Spring II" 30 x 40 in.  Available at the Marshall Gallery

I once joked to a friend by saying "It's always Spring in my works!"  And for many years that lighthearted observation has been true.  Despite whatever our general impression of the environment of the Sonoran Desert may be, the desert does present something of a monotonous face for much of the year.  No, that is not to say that there isn't life and change big and small - but the most brilliant explosion of color occurs in the Spring.

I latched on to the theme of Spring and how it is all pervasive in my work.  On the one hand, it was done with the idea to simply capture the Spring colors - when the yellows and blues and purples of the desert explode to life and the colors greet the arrival of warm days - leading into hot summer.  On the other hand my embrace of Spring themes in my work had also to do with the realization of how happy I was painting nature in a state of maximum color.  I began to realize that shadows weren't even shadows - they too had amazing color potential, and gradually all segments of the canvas brightened.  Until a tension was reached that left many of the paintings bathed in yellows, draped in flowers, and moving with color.

This painting "The Symphony of Spring II" is a derivation from a scene in one of Paul Gill's photographs ( Which I use with permission - and I remind all artists to seek the permission of the photographer before working from someone else source materiel )  Paul Gill has long struck me as one of Arizona's finest artists working in any medium - his being that of the camera.  His work has been featured in Arizona Highways Magazine, and he is one of the most respected Arizona photographers.  I was so very fortunate to strike up a friendship with him that has been fueled by art - some from the camera, some from the brush.  When I met Paul at a show opening in Scottsdale some time ago - he was so very happy to see artwork having been made from his photographs.  Early in his career he wanted to be a painter - and then transitioned to photography.  But he still sees scenes as a painter would, and I have no doubt that informs the excellence in his photography.

When I work from a photograph, as I did in this case, I take the most bare, basic outlines of the photo and use it primarily for the sketch of the painting.  In this case, if you were to see the photograph you likely wouldn't identify the painting that came from it.  I use the sketch and then I deviate completely using only basic details.  As I have matured as an artist, I find strangely that I don't stick to the sketch as tightly as I used to.  In fact, the early sketch and source photograph probably only informs 15 to 20 % of the total image.  The rest is imagination.  I feel often that I am imagining "against" the scene.  I confront the image and make in interpretation that is part emotion, part structure.  And in recent years, more emotion than anything else.

"The Symphony of Spring II " captures a wealth of sentiments that are my internal treasures.  The deep blues that seem to speak of sky and ocean and shadow.  The yellows that emerge with all life during the Springtime in the Sonoran Desert.  All the renderings of contrast - the colors against an inky, ivory black.  And the sense that a special time of year has arrived.  When a brutal land of heat and spikes and stinging insects undergoes the change that ushers in the Summer.  I have been many times into fields of poppies such as this - several of the trails of Catalina State Park have beautiful carpets of Mexican Gold Poppies during the Spring.  I've seen my kids playing with these little flowers - and seen the excitement of hikers who have hit the trails to experience this special time of year.

This painting also reminds me of something said by my mentor and friend Jean-Claude Quilici.  He said "A painting articulates itself by contrast."  And the entire foreground speaks to this principle - as it was first a painting in a pitch dark, shiny ivory black.  The entire lower half of the painting - and then one by one the flowers and details painted on top of this contrasting element.  It might well be that all things arise out of the darkness.  Something that informs our deepest primitive part of the brain - all light against darkness.  All emerged, created against that deep black.  Like the stars upon the deep black of space, or a candle in the dark.  Life created against non life - created almost in spite of it.

Most all my paintings make me very happy - this one was a standout.  It hummed with contrast and color as it emerged on canvas.  And if you'd like to see it, I invite you to visit the Marshall Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ to see this and other works.  It's a goal of mine to write more about my paintings going forward - because even I realize that there is a story behind every painting.  And it is a healthy thing to pause and remember the life of a painting as it relates to the internal visions of the artist.

One of the great joys of my life has been the constant compliment of having had my work bought and  collected for so many years.  With amazing galleries to support me, fantastic collectors who buy my work regularly, as well as magazines and books who've written about it - I remain always deeply grateful to be able to be an artist, and to dream with abandon countless Spring scenes.  Thank you!

Neil

Marshall Gallery, Scottsdale 

What Airplanes Taught me About Creativity

This week I am working on a new 36 x 48 inch painting of Organ Pipe Cacti...cacti that perhaps fall under that shadow of the more famous and iconic Saguaro, but one which is still very much a treasured part of the ecosystem of the Sonoran Desert.  Also, it should be noted that Organ Pipe National Monument, which is home to many such cacti, has been long regarded as one of the more dangerous National Monuments to visit.  It sits right on the border with Mexico, and I certainly hope that, in the future, it can become a more peaceful and visitor friendly place - where the whims of mankind would do better to give safer harbor to our natural treasures.

I should say also that I never write blogs to suit my own vanity.  I write them when I feel that I have something worthy to say, or share about my work or the arts in general.  And something that has occupied my mind more and more lately is a strange artistic comparison that I feel between airplanes, and creativity.  I thought this might be worth exploring...

On the surface it might not appear that aircraft are acts of creativity.  But I think that they very much are.  Most especially military aircraft.  When conditions present themselves where an airplane needs to have a certain kind of capability to do what is required of it, a great deal of creativity - and one might even say, counter-creativity is needed in order to make an airplane that can do things that have never been done before.  Or one that does known things better, faster, or in wartime - a more lethal way.  This is not to congratulate warmongers for the great rivers of misery and destruction that they have wrought on the world.  That is an abhorrent feature of human nature.  Rather, this is simply to contemplate how aircraft represent creative solutions to problems posed.

One of the most stirring examples is the World War II era German Messerschmidt 262, - the world's first fully operational jet fighter.  In the dying throes of the Nazi regime in 1944-1945, it is well known that Hitler and his regime turned to what he called "Wonder weapons" that could somehow salvage a German victory against overwhelming odds.  As German cities were pounded night and day by British and American bombers, German engineers pressed into service the Messerschmidt 262, in hopes that it could stem the tide that was then turning against Germany.  With untold thousands of piston engined fighters and bombers numbering the skies all around the world at that time - suddenly there appeared the Me 262 jet fighter, which could outrun the American P-51 Mustang by a full 100 miles per hour.

I have long been fascinated by this airplane and even built a model of it.  When I am in need of reflection I sometimes even hold it and look at it, and allow myself to think about it as a kind of catalyst for contemplating new solutions to problems - even in painting.  It is a question worth thinking about; how then do we create new solutions that change the paradigm entirely - without borrowing from the past?  What happens when we disregard the old rule book, throw that sucker out and just write a new one?  The Me 262 is an interesting thing to contemplate because it represented, in aviation, the act of throwing the rule book out.  That there have been essential and pivotal times when that act was necessary.  There are countless aircraft that prove this.

Fortunately, the disgusting, racist, and inhuman regime of the Nazis did indeed suffer the inevitable defeat that was necessary for human civilization to stand a chance at flourishing.  I can say with no hesitation that the marvels of German aircraft engineering in all their breadth and scope would never excuse or erase the terrible cruelty exhibited on Jews, and others, by the Nazi regime.  I take great satisfaction in knowing the great fleets of Mustangs and Spitfires proved too much for even the modest numbers of Me-262s that saw combat.  But the presence of that airplane did not go unnoticed, and some may not be aware that there were very well organized British, American, and Soviet efforts at procuring German technology, including the Me 262, after the war was over.  The moment they had defeated Germany - they wanted to get their hands on this aircraft, and others.

Part of being a good artist is to be able to comfortably allow the flow of creative insights, from whatever source.  Many artists I know are into music deeply, because they feel that cross pollination with musical inspiration.  But when I hold my model of the Me-262 somehow I gain the courage to sometimes throw the rule book out, and try to rewrite a new one.  The confidence to put that first line to that first new page, of a book that has not yet been written - that is what it really means to be an artist.

www.neilmyersart.com 

A Late Night Chat with Jason Isbell

In the past I've talked about a wide variety of subjects related to the arts and creativity.  More recently I have been delighted to see the rising star of a singer-songwriter who I have long believed to be one of the best in America - and that's Jason Isbell.  Jason's most recent Cd "Southeastern" has been gaining rave reviews and we have seen him on shows like David Letterman, and heard him on NPR's Fresh Air, among other places.  Jason is also now married to another of my favorite songwriters Amanda Shires, who will have a new CD out in August.  Good fortune has it that I met Jason twice, and I thought it might be fun to tell the story of those encounters.

Sometime around 2003 a friend gave me a CD by an Alabama band called the Drive by Truckers.  There were good songs all throughout the CD, but one stood out strongly and that was the now legendary song "Outfit."  This was one of Jason Isbell's breakthrough tunes with the band, and he went on to pen other knockout songs like "The Day John Henry Died", "Danko/ Manuel", "Goddamn Lonely Love" and "Never Gonna Change."

Not too long after he went solo, I was happy to hear that he and his band were going to play Club Congress in downtown Tucson.  I made plans to go and even took Jason a small gift - a laminated bookmark made out of the actual autograph of the author Chuck Palahniuk.  I remember seeing Jason stepping into the club and at some point pulled him aside, said hello, etc and asked him if I had heard correctly that he was a big fan of Chuck Palahniuk.  He said yes - and I gave him the autographed bookmark, and let him carry on getting ready for the show.  He was gracious, mellow, and very thoughtful.  When he got on stage he put on a killer good show and we talked once more before we left.  By that time I had a few beers in me and was feeling chipper - but I still remember what I told him when I left him that particular time - I told him "You are a poet.  Like Townes Van Zandt or Ray La Montagne.  Keep up what you are doing."  

The second time Jason and his band played Club Congress I made plans to be there, and again Jason put on a helluva show.  I remember he had a cold or sore throat and was coughing pretty hard - not just a smoker's cough, but a sick man's cough.  Poor guy was pretty sick it seemed, but then he jumped on stage and threw down again and it was a great show.  You'd think his vocals would have suffered but you couldn't tell a lick of difference.  I guess after those years of hard living and traveling with the Drive by Truckers he had gotten a good taste of what it meant to carry on and be a road warrior.  Sick. Well.  Hungover, or anything else.

After that show it was very, very late and I was gonna say hello to Jason but he had disappeared outside the backstage door at Club Congress.  It was a chilly night out - an odd night for Tucson for sure, quite cold.  On my way out I decided to walk around the side of the building and could see a group of people by the backstage door.  Jason was among them and I walked up to them, stuck my hand out and said "Hey Jason - I'm the artist Neil Myers.  Just wanted to say a quick hello."  And he said "Oh yeah.  I remember you.  I think I've seen some of your work online."  People were starting to dissipate and go home and he said "How's the art business?"  And I told him a little about how things were going.  He listened intently, smoking his cigarette and coughing hard from time to time - still suffering his sore throat.  At times I can be a bit of a talker, so we leaned against the rails and I talked about art and songwriting and he mostly listened.  It's hard to describe the vibe of Mr Isbell.  But perhaps the best way to say it is the feeling that he is absorbing stories - yours and other people's.  Behind the glow of his ever present cigarette, there in the dark were two keen eyes paying close attention.  He wasn't shy.  Not in the slightest.  But he listened to even small talk with a sense of acute attention.

For the next twenty or thirty minutes the survivors of the late night show came and went, some said hi to him and asked him about the meanings of some of his songs.  I remember someone asking him about "Chicago Promenade" and he didn't really seem to feel he could explain what it meant.  He just sort of gently brushed the issue aside and was very sweet to the person who asked it.  He always thanked people who came to the show, and those who popped around back of the club to wish him well.  We stood for a while and chatted with Jimbo Hart - and Jason introduced me to Browan Lollar, his guitarist who is also an artist and a friend I still chat with here and there.  We talked about songwriters and the Dillinger gang, who were caught all those years ago right there at club congress.  And at one point there was nobody left out there behind the club.  It was getting bitterly cold and though Jason gave every indication he was happy to chat all night - I remember telling him that he better get back inside before the cold made his throat worse.  I didn't want to be the reason his throat went to hell for the next few shows.  We shook hands and parted very amicably - and I remember telling him as he went in the door "Oh, I forgot to ask you - do you know the songs of Justin Rutledge?"  He said he didn't and I told him to check him out if he got a chance.  He said "Justin Rutledge", to make a mental note and we parted ways.

I drove home still shivering from the freezing cold desert air.  But I had that great satisfaction of having had an enjoyable talk with someone who I knew was very special.  And in turn, when critics and so many others now find themselves getting on the long train of Isbell appreciators - I am almost amused at how long many of us had been following his work before his latest CD.  And how many of us knew that this songwriter was unique.

Jason if you read this, I want to congratulate you on your sobriety, your continually beautiful and meaningful songs - and for that cold night by the railroad tracks at 1am talking about songs and life.  You have proved yourself the poet I always thought you were, and we thank you for sharing your talent with the rest of us.

Neil



www.jasonisbell.com 


www.amandashiresmusic.com



www.neilmyersart.com

Art Criticism From Other Artists, My View

This week I am working on a new 36 x 48 inch painting of Cathedral Rock, near the stunningly beautiful town of Sedona, Arizona.  If you have never visited Sedona, I would strongly urge you to do so.  For Arizona, it is OUR land of red and orange rocks.  The mountains and formations are amazing - and the hikes are second to none.

This week I have also been thinking about art criticism and I thought that it might be a nice time to share my views on this subject.  Reason being - I got into a heated argument with another person on facebook; and no we didn't solve the world's issues while arguing over the internet...it did bring to light my perhaps unusual views about art criticism.  So I thought I would state them clearly here.

Here is the thing...if I don't like a piece of art, I generally keep my mouth shut.  I feel that this is an act of trust on my part because I prefer to trust that an artist can, by themselves, iron out any of the rough patches or weak spots in their work.  I feel that if an artist is doing this alone, they deserve the right to make that exploration without my soul-killing comments.  I will be honest here, in my own art career, and in the development of my work, when it came to the fundamentals of how my work came to look as it did, I did not listen to anyone.  What came out on canvas was pure inner voice.  Nothing else.  I was, as we all are, bouyed up by the fact that collectors bought my work, and that magazines wrote about it - but in the core of what has made the work, it was pure inner vision reacting to a landscape in front of me.  I actually feel this was a benifit, not a detractor.  I feel that because I shut out the noise of all other people - well meaning or not, I managed to arrive at something close to my own visions.  Now I did frequently listen to other artists when it came down to mastering the materiels needed for the job.  My artist friends have been wonderful in suggesting different things that would help get different effects.

I do believe that if one chooses a classroom environment, art school, or formal classes with a top level artist - then one does and should submit themselves to the kind of criticism that I find is, at the least, a distraction, and at worst - what I've described as a soul-killer.  There are people who really do benifit from a classroom enviornment and an evironment with hard critqiues and such things.  I freely accept that and I don't lose any sleep over that.  However I am not one of those people.  I told a friend yesterday, "The creative spark inside me, I don't let anyone else handle."  So I shut out the noise and I DO NOT participate in art critiques, and I have never invited another artist to critique my work.  I feel like if you like it, then great, thanks...if you don't, then move on to find yourself another wonderful artist that you can connect to.  For some artists, however, they cannot let this be.  They have to critique someone else's work because it is almost like their own act of conquest and appropriation.  It is how they try to curve your work to their vision.  I don't accept this, and I don't take a part in it.  And I don't do it to other artists.

So, as this person on Facebook was left thinking - it might be easy to think that I only accept flattery.  No, that is not what I am saying.  I've been told to my face, and accepted with perfect serenity, someone saying they didn't really care for my work, or that it wasn't their thing.  That's totally fine.  What I don't accept is unwanted and unasked for desconstruction from other artists.  I have said it before, there is only room for one artist in my head and he is the only one I let in.  That is a monkish and solitary way to see things, perhaps - but that's how I see it.

Anyway, my heated conversation with the person on Facebook ended with the person saying that I was staying in my comfort zone - and they even called me "lazy".  Expletives were hurled and one tactless and uncouth person was rapidly un-friended by me.  Note to those who like to bash other people's artwork - if you crudely attack other people's work, expect a vigorous counterattack.  If you have been so brash as to nominate yourself judge and jury over someone elses' work - then don't just expect them to sit there and take it.  I don't.  Art is the product of the heart - and when expressed truly it must be defended against those who either don't understand it, or wish to bring someone down from the heights of even modest accomplishment.  I defended my work against this person I mentioned and I won't apologize for that.  Am I prickly and sensitive about my work?  You better believe I am.  And then if a person calls me lazy...oh well, I always try to be a nice guy and I believe in compassion and seeking understanding but call me that and the gloves are off.  Whatever I am - lazy is NOT one of them.  Never has been.  One could not keep the utterly ridiculous busy schedule I keep, and even dream of the word "lazy".

That is my view.  I think life and art are a products of uplift.  If one takes the chisel of destruction to everything, nothing is left but the pieces.  I prefer to create, not revel in pulling apart the work of another.  I offer my own work as a take it or leave it thing.  There is so much beauty in the world, I want to spend my days holding that beauty up high - rather than chipping away at sincere creations, whatever their stage of development.

www.neilmyersart.com 

Saguaros - and NO I Don't Get Tired of Painting Them!

Hello everyone - sorry I've been a little absent.  I tend not to blog like a madman.  I prefer to write something when I actually have something to say, rather than all to the reams of drivel and blabber floating around out there on the internet. 

This week I am working on a new 30 x 40 of Saguaros on a hillside of blooming brittle-brush.  This painting, and a legion of others that are sitting and drying in the studio gave me the idea for this blog post - some thoughts about one of our great Arizona icons, the Saguaro cactus. 

Since we are planning a saguaros show of my paintings at the Marshall-LeKAE Gallery in Scottsdale for March of 2013, I thought it might be nice to reflect a little on the giant cactus that has been so much the centerpiece of countless paintings by me - and other Arizona artists. 

I remember once talking to Max Mikesell, who formerly ran the Max Gallery in Tucson some years back, and I remember Max saying that it seemed to him that some artists who paint saguaros hadn't even looked at them.  Almost as if they had some general idea of what a saguaro should look like; two upturned arms, very "roadrunner and coyote" kind of landscape stereotype.  And he mentioned that even though my saguaro themed works weren't strictly realistic, they still showed evidence that I had taken some time to look at them...and indeed I have.

What is most important if you are an artist painting Saguaros is the realization that they provide on of the most prominent verticals in a landscape dominated by big skies, small, round trees, and huge horizons.  Saguaros cast your eyes up to the vertical, and thus balance a landscape much the way that a pine tree might well do back east in the woods.  But the cool thing about saguaros is their amazing shapes and individual character.  I've told people that they might well be one of the few plants that I think actually have personality.  You see them swell with the summer rains.  You see them hold up and hold firm when monsoon storms rip through the area.  And you see them lord over the landscape like giants - standing tall and proud even in the hottest, most brutal parts of Arizona summer.  I have called some among the series of saguaro paintings that I've done "Giants of the Desert", and it seems to me that they are indeed giants who stand over us in the fiery heat of our surroundings.  When you come to know them and the fact that they grow so slowly that they are frequently 50 to 75 years old before they even sprout a single arm - you then realize that in mature saguaro forests, you may be looking at 150 or 200 year old plants.  Plants whose duration dwarfs the lifetime of humans.  I remember a biologist saying that was one of the problems of long term saguaro studies; that it is hard to study them in a sustained way because that might take three generations of scientists.  Imagine...

(I'll note for the record also that people still get a laugh at me because I have the habit of saying "Sa-Guaros" with a hard "G".  Whereas most of the locals say "sah-wa-ros".  Oh well, I didn't grow up here, and some habits die hard.)

For me, I guess it's fair to say that I've set myself up and studied them as intently as Monet did Rouen Cathedral, or his poplars.  I have never gotten tired of looking at them, and always been keen to understand the unique personality of the plants as I studied them.

I love the world in all it's landscapes and variety.  But there will always be a soft spot in my heart for these wonderful "Giants of the Desert."

www.neilmyersart.com 

'Master', Signal of Achievement, or Meaningless Word in the Arts?

This week I am working on a new 36 x 48 in. painting of poppies in bloom at the foot of the Catalinas. On Saturday of this week I'll be doing a paint in gallery demonstration at Cobalt Fine Arts in Tubac. Anyone free to stop in will be most welcome - the Cobalt Gallery has some of the best contemporary artists in Southern Arizona.

Today I wanted to write a brief bit on a word that has echoed in my head for years - the word 'master'. In the arts, the term is used, in it's most basic sense, as a kind of reverence for someone who is generally accepted to be extremely skillful, unique, original - or all of these things. Of course when we speak of "the old masters" we know that we are talking about those artists who have filled the museums that we all enjoy. Yes, the term is a kind of reverence, and in MOST cases, at least with regards to the artists of the past, it is a term that is justified.

But what about today? I must admit that the word 'master' as it relates to living artists is a term that is frequently misused. One of the prime ways that it is misused is when an artist refers to themselves as one. When you call yourself a master, in your promo materials, in your bio materials, etc - you are claiming to be both the soapbox and the person standing on it. I think that being deemed a 'master', if the word is to be used at all, is a designation that should be left to others, not to the artist themselves.

It seems to me that if you call yourself a 'master' then you are greasing the slopes towards arrogance. I once told a friend about the day that I realized what the difference was between arrogance and confidence; it's simply the manner. An arrogant person believes that they are great and seems intent to tell you all about it - and to surround themselves with people who may be cowed into uncritical adoration. A confident person offers up the fruit of their abilities, will defend their visions with equal gusto - but a confident person will never beat another person over the head with what they have done. They will simply say "Here it is. I believe in this. I believe in myself." I have heard, firsthand and second hand, the diatribes of arrogant so called-masters. Some so self-assured as to insult those who disagree with them on matters like politics. This is nuts for an artist, because art is a kind of middle ground where people of all backgrounds and all beliefs can stroll the same turf. Art is truly a unifier. Even myself, I will admit to a rare comment or two on politics, but the last time I did speak on a particular matter, I also said that I know I am speaking to people with lots of different views, and I want my friends to know I respect our differences. I trust that as long as we are civil, we can even profit from the discussion. A great piece of art doesn't have party affiliations. And it shouldn't.

There is only one man I would call a 'master', and that is Jean-Claude Quilici. He has been my dear friend, cohort, and inspiration for many years. He is my master, and as long as I live I don't suspect that I'll have another. But one of the main reasons I call him my 'maitre' as we'd say in French, is that I have NEVER heard him refer to himself that way. He is a painter. Many think he is a master. But I would dare say he spends probably not an second of his time thinking of himself that way. That's the key.

It's a little like the explanation I remember Jean-Paul Sartre gave when he refused the Nobel Prize for Literature. He said that it was a way in which the literary establishment kills your career by saying that you are, in essence, finished, and that you have nothing more to say. He later said that he believed his work was more alive in his later years because he refused the prize. I.e., he refused to admit he had reached any kind of plateau - and he just kept working. I feel that the use of the world 'master' in art represents the same kind of plateau effect. And I still think it is more sensible term for others to consider when one's life's work is finished.

Whether or not people will one day call me a master, I don't worry about that. I don't want to let anyone kill what I hope is an upward progression in my work by admitting that I've reached some pinnacle. All that is illusory, in my mind. I only concern myself that I should put my head down when one painting is finished, and then start thinking about the next thing - and so on and so forth. Art is many paths - many trails. I am only on one of them. My fellow artists on are others. (Some insist that their trail is the only one in the woods - but some of us know better.) Where I started and where I end up is really only something that others will decide when my life is over. So it's best not to worry about being a 'master', or putting people into a state of hollow adoration while you are alive. There will be a point, of course, when my life and all the paintings are done - then people can say whatever they want!

Unknown Places

This week I am working on a 30 x 48 inch vertical Saguaro landscape for some clients in Scottsdale, AZ. I was never a great fan of narrow, vertical paintings but I find that I like them better and better the bigger the size gets. A 30 x 48, trusting you place the subject matter on canvas well, is a large, plunging vertical and it creates a great feel of size and verticality.

I wanted to be honest with folks reading this blog that the reason there are not thousands of blog posts by me is that I typically reserve my comments for when I actually have something that I think may be useful to say. These people who tweet or blog every time they brush their teeth or take out the trash just drive me nuts. I think that anytime you write something you should at least litmus test it in your mind to see if it's either vaguely amusing - therefore providing a little brightness to someone's day who could use it - or it should be useful and shed a little light.

I have written at great length about originality in art, and the need to seek and express new sensations that are both personal and universal at the same time. (Frequently, if a piece of music, literature, or art is only one of those things - it's not very good, in my opinion.) A couple of weeks ago I found myself enthralled by a book about the 1789 mutiny on the ship The Bounty. The book was the more recent title by Caroline Alexander. Though the book has some long, tiresome descriptions of the sailors captured and put on trial for their roles in the mutiny...what interested me most was what happened to the mutineers who went on to settle Pitcairn Island - a remote island outpost in the Pacific. It was very interesting to read about how a group of Englishmen, with some Tahitians that they essentially kidnapped - created a small society on this remote island, far detached from any part of what was the modern world at the time. What followed after those men settled on Pitcairn and burned the ship - was a fractious period where many of them killed one another, or were killed by the Tahitians that they settled the island with.

What I am getting at here was the realization that I had to admit to myself that one of the most interesting periods of history, in my eye, was the colonial period. One favor, however, that modern history and a common regard for human rights has given to us is to also realize that for Europeans to settle in places like America, Africa, South America, and the South Pacific, the wholesale disenfranchisement and often murder of the natives was required, and even celebrated by some. This should not be painted for anything other than what it was. Jared Diamond's fabulous book "Guns, Germs and Steel" did a great job telling this story. However there did emerge from the colonial period in history something unique and of use to everyone, including artists. The entering into spaces and places unknown to the Western World.

It is not, of course, that natives of all continents didn't do this as well. They have always done this - what was compelling in this case was what Europeans did when they ventured into new places with the technologies of their ocean going ships and the written languages and narratives that could capture and record what the far off world was really like, for the enthrallment of people of all nations.

If I had been alive then I might have been a willing participant in the age of exploration - but what was revealed to learned eyes came at the cost of the genocide and subjugation of entire regions full of native peoples. Whatever light was shed, cast a pall of darkness at the same time. I would have loved to explore and see such amazing places as they were being revealed - but I could not have raised my hand in anger against anyone who was there before me. Europeans had, far too often, convinced themselves that any kind of horror was justified if so called 'civilized' men were the culprits.

I should say also that my interests in 'unknown spaces' has found a great deal of enjoyment in the exploration of space and the planets. When a space probe opens it's lenses for the first time on planets like Mars, or moons like Titan - I am one of the first to want to see what they see.

Even when I was a kid I would explore wooded areas around where I lived for miles and miles. Until I knew every tree, and even until I could guide my friends great distances through the woods in the dark. It was all great fun to me...

However much a stretch the comparison might be - I think it is still useful. The same drive that would make someone disembark from a ship, or travel with Lewis and Clark across the American West, or penetrate the deepest jungles of Africa or the Pacific - the same interest and curiosity should exist within the heart of the artist. With all the world of knowledge at our backs, it seems to me that the canvas is still an unknown space, and we are getting to know our world, interior and exterior, each time we set out to explore that imagery.

Happy Holidays to Everyone!

www.neilmyersart.com

Fortunate Tunnel Vision

This week I am working on a large 36 x 48 in. oil painting of a blooming desert spring scene - based on a photograph by the amazing photographer Paul Gill. This is the fourth Paul Gill image that I have painted, and all I can say is that his vision is a twin of my own - being that he looks for scenes in a landscape nearly identical to the ones I look for.

I found myself thinking about something that I was writing earlier this week - a sort of idea of artistic tunnel vision. I remember Paul Stanley of Kiss saying something to the effect that if you really want to succeed, stop listening to people! At first that comment seems counter intuitive. But when you stop and think about it, the realization comes that if you are really reaching - if you are going for something creative, bold, and original - you need the strength to cling to your own vision and see it through. You need to be able to shut out certain noises and criticisms and focus hard on what you feel you have to do.

I relate to Paul's advice quite well - because I have shared with a few artists my own loathing of the traditional settings for criticisms. I mean this mainly in regards to artists criticizing others' work. I have long preferred the harsh critiques of myself to myself - and that also of my wife, who is equally unsparing. Because it seem to me that when a group of artists sit around and take apart a painting - which is like taking apart a piece of sincere emotion - they are bringing to the table their own preferences about what art should be. And thus leveling their aim at the artwork of people who may not share their personal sensibilities - all the while trying to bend the art being critiqued to something of their own vision. In this way it seems to me that the artist-critic seems to want to take possession of a work they are looking at. Burn it with their own brand, so to speak.

And it is not to say that I think a work escapes criticism - not at all. When it hits a gallery wall or makes its way into a magazine or publication, you can damn sure be certain that it will be critiqued. I expect and welcome that. But what arrives there for the critique is nothing other than a product of my own visions - and it has been bent or altered to suit nobody but myself. In doing that, I feel nearer to my own vision of what a painting should be. Because it seems to me that when you feel that you are doing something truly different, you have to put the idea forth to the public directly, with the hopes that it will connect with sensitive individuals. This has happened for me, and for that I am very fortunate. But I am also sure that it happened because I was stubborn and persistent in not allowing my ideas to be diluted and watered down to suit other artists.

What Paul Stanley really knows about creativity is implicit in what he said about not listening to others; because if you would have told a member of the public in 1972 that in the following year a band would emerge, wearing kabuki style white face paint - with smoking guitars, spitting blood, fist pounding rock anthems, etc etc - they might well have laughed at you. But so many years and a zillion album and ticket sales later nobody laughs at the original KISS idea that Paul Stanley was a part of.

Now you might like KISS or you might not, but you can't even BEGIN to argue that they are somehow unoriginal!

That's creativity!

www.neilmyersart.com

Oasis by the Shore

This week I am working on a painting of the Saint Francis of Assisi church in Taos, New Mexico. The amazing photographer Paul Gill granted me permission to attempt some paintings from his photos, and this painting is one derived from his photo. Paul is one of the most talented photographers in our region, and has a wonderful knack for finding the most drama and color in our Southwestern Landscape. Visit his website at: http://paulgillphoto.zenfolio.com/

I wanted to write a brief note to share a wonderful place that I was fortunate enough to visit a few weeks ago; Torrey Pines State Reserve. ( www.torreypine.org ) This is a stunning place where a large stretch of Southern California coastline has been set aside because it is one of the few remaining habitats of the rarest pine tree in the United States, the Torrey Pine. This 2,000 acre preserve sits right on the coastline within the city limits of San Diego, CA. My wife and son and I went there in the early morning and hiked several trails - one leading down to the coast, above beautiful cliffs that plunged right down into the blue of the sea. It was really special - and all the while I was there I kept telling my wife what a great treasure it is to have an unspoiled stretch of Southern California coastline - very valuable real estate - kept wild and natural as it would have appeared before the rapid development of the area. I urge anyone with some time to visit Torrey Pines and take a walk there. It was a beautiful little oasis in a Southern California that is frequently little more than a sea of cars and fumes and crowds of people.

Also, for those of you who are closer to my area, you should try to visit Catalina State Park - the Arizona Poppies are blooming along with several other species of wildflowers and the banks of washes and other areas are now coated with lovely shades of pale-pastel orange and yellow. Even some purples and whites mixed in. If you can brave the heat before the monsoon rains, there are some amazing scenes to be sketched, painted, or photographed.

www.neilmyersart.com

Fiji, From the Eyes of an Artist

I have heard it said that travel is lethal to every form of ignorance known to humankind. True enough. When I was a small boy I was fascinated by the globe at my great-grandmother's house, so much so that she wrote my name on the bottom of it and promised it to me when she passed on. Today that same old brown globe sits on a shelf just to right of my desk, where I am writing this, and it is currently turned in such as way as to show the vast South Pacific, with New Zealand, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomons, and countless other islands featured. As some of you may know, my wife and I lived in New Zealand for four years, and we both share a love and fascination with the locales of the South Pacific. Such a love of the region took us to Fiji just a week and a half ago - and I though it might be nice to recap some of the sights and sounds of Fiji for the readers of this column.

Let me first say that as it happens that you have to sometimes get thru the nightmare to arrive at the dream - this was the case in our trip down to Fiji. A short time after takeoff from Los Angeles, a man on the airplane had a violent seizure. Doctors were called for (luckily 4 of them were on the plane), they consulted and advised the captain to turn the plane around back towards LA, where the nearest hospital could be found. So what was supposed to be a 10 hour ride to Fiji turned into a 15 hour ordeal with a cranky toddler. For all those parents out there, you can well imagine what that was like with an 18 month old boy! However there was one shining spot on the trip itself - my wife and I thought we recognized a lady who was on our flight from Tucson to LA. Both of us tossed it around in our minds, and then as we were about to get off the aircraft it hit us...she was one of the actresses on the show "Private Practice". It was Amy Brenneman. At some point when we were at baggage claim at LAX we ended up again beside her and her family; both she and her daughter were watching our son Liam take his chance to run around and play with the luggage and she said "He's so cute!" At that point I said "Pardon me Ma'am, but are my wife and I imagining things or are you one of the ladies from 'Private Practice?' She nodded yes with a smile. I shook her hand and said "Nice to meet you", and told her how much we enjoyed the show. I've never been one to gush over celebs or actors, but running into someone like Amy Brenneman makes life interesting from time to time. I worked in hotels for many years, and enjoyed meeting some pretty interesting people in entertainment and politics.

In any event, after the 15 hour ordeal from LAX to Nadi, Fiji, we finally arrived. Wiped out but wide eyed, as you can imagine. The taxi ride in from the airport to the resort was one of the most eye opening things - and it reminded me a lot of Vanuatu. Though Fiji clearly had better infrastructure that Vanuatu, many part of it were still quite poor and many Fijians life without comforts that we all take for granted. Even as simple as running water. It's also eye opening to see how dirty and unkept poor towns can be. With little money to keep things clean or pave sidewalks and do necessary repairs, again these are all things we don't even think about in America and many western style countries. But if the towns may have been a little rough and life rudimentary - Fijian's more than made up for it by their warm welcome and beautifully friendly attitude.

Of course we stayed on a resort at Denarau Island, so yes we enjoyed Fiji on the high end. But there were many acts big and small that even resort employees didn't need to do. For example, the Fijian greeting "Bula" was common among everyone you'd meet on the resorts and other places. It was such a warm greeting that after awhile, you'd hear the guests children saying "Bula!" to staff and to others. Another amazing thing about Fijians is their love of family. Our son got kissed by more strangers during his week in Fiji than in his entire life before! Passing security on the way OUT of the country, he got kissed on the cheeks twice by ladies working there. At the resort, one of the doormen actually learned the baby sign for "more" so that he could ask Liam if he wanted to ride on the golf cart with him! One of my best memories of Fiji will always be standing with Liam in front of the Sheraton at Denarau Island and seeing this big, dark Fijian man pull up on a golf cart, look at Liam right in the face and put his hands together making the baby sign for "more"! What was clear was how much the people of the island love children, even those who are not their own. Quite a contrast to how kids are sometimes treated as nothing more than a nuisance to some in our culture.

Of course, being a landscape artist, it was the landscape that filled my eyes everywhere we visited. Fiji was green in many places, but still parched brown and dry in others. The islands were in desperate need of rain by the time we arrived, and the rains that plagued us for the first 3 days of the trip were quite welcome to the locals. In the countryside stretched near endless fields of sugarcane, a huge part of the Fijian economy. Cassava and others things were grown as well. But sugarcane, by it's very presence, appeared to be king. During the days when it rained the entire landscape took on a bit of a foreboding aspect - and when you looked on the fields and mountains in the dark, ominous clouds, it looked almost scary. But the break of the rains after the 3rd day opened up the Fiji that all the tourists know - gleaming and beautiful. Tropical, green, and alive.

We took 2 day trips that got us off the resort and out into the Fijian countryside. One was a trip to the Garden of the Sleeping Giant, a lovely botanical garden nestled in next to dark, volcanic mountains. There we browsed some of the most lovely orchids you've ever seen, as well as a lily pond in the middle of the jungle - something that seemed more a product of a fairy tale that realty. Even in the rain, the scene was beautiful. With dark, volcanic hills towering above the dripping wet jungle below.

Our 2nd day trip was out to a resort island called Robinson Crusoe Island. Here was a long, lovely island that was still quite small and quaint. The boat ride out there, winding its was through mangroves and other lovely scenes was equally memorable. The island itself is a small tourist island, and when we arrived we were treated to traditional greetings as well as a Kava ceremony. Kava, as some of you may know, is a drink that is enjoyed my many different island cultures in the South Pacific, but it has the most ritualistic significance for Fijians. Kava is offered as a gift of respect between tribes, and also when one wants to visit a Fijian village it is considered proper to offer a gift of Kava to the chief. In the old days, if the chief accepted you were safe - if he did not, then you better run like hell because you might be dinner for the tribe later that evening!

While on the island I went out for a snorkel while my wife and son enjoyed the beach. Snorkling was difficult on the reef which was probably a mile or so offshore, however it was still a great experience even when fighting the currents. All the colors of the fish and corals below were wilder and more intense than any artist's palette.

While I was there, I found myself thinking of something that I had told art lovers before - that I love lots of different scenes that I find around the world. I love the jungles equally as I do the deserts. Mountains as much as the seashores. I have been called a Southwestern painter because of where I live, and I don't altogether reject that notion - because my work has blossomed best in Arizona, New Mexico, and the American West in general. Just the same, though - a jungle in Fiji or a seashore in New Zealand are equally beautiful and interesting to me. Many people aren't aware that I've done 2 paintings of the giant Moai of Easter Island - and they were some of my favorites - both sold. I once told my wife when we were discussing unusual or exotic landscapes how much I enjoyed strange places, or visually challenging places, but I also said "of course the most radical landsapes aren't here, they are on other planets." Which might well explain my own fasciantions with the pictures taken by space probes of Venus's surface, and those on Mars, the moon, and Saturn's moon Titan.

Overall, I would rate Fiji an incredible experience. Travel is something that is good for the soul, and I'm sure that it's absolutely necessary for an artist. The challenge to the eye that travel brings for an artist is crucial to helping them understand their own work, and rise to the challenges of tackling new scenes that they have the good fortune to experience. Stagnation is an enemy for an artist, and the thrill of new places is often the perfect antidote. Fiji did that for me, and I hope to go back again.

www.neilmyersart.com

Keeping it New

This week I am working on a large 30 x 40 in landscape from one of my favorite places in Arizona - Catalina State Park. As luck would have it, it seems that something is blooming there almost all the time, and some of the most extraordinary yellows can be found among the flowers lining trails like the Sutherland Trail.

Recently I finished reading the book "The Genius in all of us" by David Shenk, and in that book the author makes the very compelling argument that talent - or what some may call 'genius', is something that is much more the product of work, conditioning, and overall concerted effort - and that the old adages about a person being born with a certain ability are over exaggerated and often just plain wrong. He details sports figures, and countless others that had surprisingly humble beginnings, and who honed their crafts to such an extent that they become the best in their respective abilities.

With the information in this book, it seems to me that one could say that ability is something that is developed and made. Art is no different. I might concede that as a young man, I was moved by art on a level of instinct, before I had any other conceptions or ideas about it. But my own experience in becoming an artist, and becoming an exhibiting artist with some good credits to his name - that has been a product of nothing but work, work, work. I think sometimes people get the idea that the artist is a listless person who just daubs a few things on canvas and tries to swindle the world into thinking it's the work of genius. Nothing could be further from the truth. My mentor, the artist Jean-Claude Quilici, said in an interview that "painting is a manual craft, and you learn it by doing it." Well said. Sure there are prodigies in art, like anything else (I was not one of them :) however the book also details how prodigies are the result of people being in certain situations that allowed them to be taught well, and for their skills to grow at a very early age. Mozart's father was a music teacher...surprise surprise. Picasso's father exposed him to thorough lessons in art and draftsmanship. Even my mom taught me about drawing and shading and such - and I was not without some roots. Growing up as I did, looking at her drawings and paintings from the 1970s.

As I was thinking about this book, my conception of my own painting style lead me to conclude that it was horribly rigid. That is, what I do, I do the same way almost every single time. By no means is the image the same - but the execution, and my own learning about my craft had solidified into something like iron - inflexible. Always there but without the air of experimentation. So when I read in this book about how one of the characteristics of successful people is that they are never satisfied with their current skill level - I decided to devote at least a portion of my time to artistic experimentation. I bought pastels and have begun experimenting with them, and am looking to do both watercolors and a few figure paintings - mostly portraits. I've completed 3 portraits and 4 pastel paintings, and subsequently found myself enjoying what I was doing - because it was new and fresh, and for the fact that I was having to challenge myself to learn how to get adequate effects from the new mediums.

The other day as I was in the studio staring at the three portraits I had completed, our 18 month old son walked in and pointed straight at my self-portrait and said "Da da!" with a big smile on his face. And even though a tough assessment has led me to conclude that my portraits are a bit amateurish and need work - I find myself thinking that if my self portrait was immediately recognizable to an 18 month old boy, then there must be at least enough content there to keep working on it and refine it. Few people know that one of my first art sales ever was a portrait of the painter Renoir. Funny how we circle back to our roots, isn't it?

To me, the best artists adapt themselves to multiple mediums, and that is something that I want to continue to work on and explore. It goes without saying that my oil on canvas landscapes have built my art career - and I would not presume to know if galleries I show with would have the desire to show watercolors and pastels by me. But all I can know for now is that the experimental urge is good to for me, good for my sanity - and I believe that it will ultimately be good for my art.

www.neilmyersart.com

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

Expressionism vs. Realism

"The man who deals with originality is desperately needed, but seldom wanted. For along with his promise of victory he lets loose the shadows of chaos."

David Hare writing about Jackson Pollock


This week I have just returned from beautiful Bryce Canyon, Utah - and I am working on several new paintings including a new Pueblo and a New Mexico landscape derived from a photo taken near the Guadeloupe Mountains.

I have recently heard an open discussion, sometimes friendly and sometimes not - coming from artists who are vociferous in their defense of realism. Some are saying that what is needed is a new movement that has been tagged as "Novo Realism". Several things, I think, are going on here and are worthy of talking about further.

I think that what bugs many realists is the possibility that artists who work in either expressionistic or abstract styles are not well trained. Realists are mostly classically trained, they paint from life, they go out into the field and do plein air studies, etc. They are the ones that are toiling away on reproductions of plaster casts, and going to great trouble to hone their skills so that what emerges on canvas is a fair representation of the real world. Realists know what they have done to train themselves, and they feel that art is being sold short when somebody either abides too loosely to reality, or when they don't abide by it at all. There is a reason why Jackson Pollock, as an abstract expressionist, was on the receiving end of a ton of scorn when he pioneered his "all over" poured paintings. The same process goes on today when realists look at the world of art. You could think of this situation metaphorically by saying that realists are like classical musicians, trained in violin, piano etc. Such musicians may look at a Rock and Roll guitarist and think "How can he fill an arena with screaming fans with just a few barre chords?" Mr Rock and Roll taught himself, and people are going nuts over him. As a guitar player, I sympathize with this thought, when I think about guitarists like Toni Iommi of Black Sabbath, who wrote some of the greatest rock / metal songs with very simple progressions. Complexity does sometimes represent talent, but not always. Sometimes the forms in which one operates are so laden with previously held assumptions that there is little room for the artist themselves to get out. That is why I am an expressionist, and why it suits my temperament much more than realism.

Also, we should be a bit more honest about realism. What do people mean when they are painting realistically? In the most basic sense, they mean to say that they are painting something that is a fair representation of the way the thing they are depicting really looks. But when we see a beautiful woman stretched onto a sofa, with soft light coming thru the window and forms rendered like Sargent or Whistler may have done - I don't exactly subscribe to that being real in the purest sense. We look at the woman on the sofa, we know it's a woman on the sofa - fine. But while one might want to paint those wistful and comforting realism scenes, nobody is making much of an effort to paint an unemployment line. Nobody decides to do a portrait of a devastated family who has just lost their health insurance. Few people, some have done so - but few people have the courage to paint subjects from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't see plein air artists lining up to paint large gobs of oil washing up on the shores of Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana. And I sure don't see galleries or collectors wanting to show and buy these things. So what is depicted, and what is most approved of for the viewer, is a style of work that is real in look, but rarely ever real in any situational sense. This is no crime, by the way. But I interpret realism in a pretty unrelenting sense. However, I assert that art is a free engagement process. If a collector wants to buy realistic works, and the artist wants to produce them - I hope all involved go away happy. But realism is only one kind of tree in the forest. There are others, and all make the colors and shades we adore.

Another way to think of a discussion of Expressionism and Realism is something like a filter. A realist uses a dense, heavy filter - for the look of the subject anyway - and the individual touch of the artist is usually minimized in realism. An Expressionist, like myself, prefers a filter that lets only some of the subject through, and the rest is a product of gesture, light, color, and the temperament of the artist. A Realist would say that much of that applies to them as well - but an Expressionist departs sharply from this mold by not worrying too much if the rock in the landscape doesn't look like any rock that one has seen before. The rock, for an Expressionist, is a product of gesture and feeling.

I would share with realists the fact that I too respect training in art - whether that be self training or proper studio or school training. However I don't insist on this as an absolute necessity. The ancient cave paintings as Lascaux, which I adore very much, were painted by people who carried with them nothing more than the wish to express something meaningful about the world around them. And of course there is a long line from those primitive people to the Michelangelos and Raphaels of the world. But all were operating on the same instinct to make art meaningful. I find no battle between them. Neither should there be any battles between realists and expressionists. Like the trees of the forests I had mentioned - you don't hear the Oaks telling the Bristlecones to go straighten their branches if they really want to be a tree. You don't hear the Cedars ask the Paloverdes why on earth their bark is green...all forms independent and meaningful are appreciated. All are trees, no matter what the difference of forms. And bear in mind I do not argue for artistic relativism. The ability to say "that's a bad painting" is crucial if we are ever going to know what a good one is. That why I draw the line at "meaningful" forms, and expressions of art that have communicative ability. That's also why I have struggled endlessly with artists such as Barnett Newman - because despite my clear expressionist sympathies, I smell a cop-out when I see a single stripe down a huge canvas - and I resent the implication that I'm not cultivated enough to get the meaning. I'm not even sure Newman knew what he meant, or even meant to express.

So, as mentioned, I see no conflict here - other than the one we stir up unnecessarily. But if I were to offer one thought, one little tinge of competitive spirit between Expressionists and Realists, this is what I would say; if one were to hold a major exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh, arguably the greatest expressionist and pioneer of the style - if one held a retrospective of Van Gogh's greatest works, I would suggest that it is very likely that Van Gogh would bring in more interest, more media coverage, and more attendance than any realist painter, living or dead. He at least proved the value of deeply held emotion, expression and love of color on canvas. And the crowds that follow his works prove his impact.

As an Expressionist, Van Gogh stands tall - with contemporary artists like Jean-Claude Quilici, to show the power, popularity, and creative energy of art when the painter departs from the path of realism, and plows into the wild forest beyond.

www.neilmyersart.com

Going Home

This week I have just finished up a lovely new painting called "Yellow Fields, Catalina Spring." After taking a hike with an old friend from college, and enjoying the particularly beautiful spring we've had here in Southern Arizona - I remembered standing by a trail and seeing what looked like a sea of yellow and gold poppies glittering in the sun. And I had the impression in my mind of just solid blocks of yellow - without reference to the thousands of individual poppies that made up the view. An overall effect of yellow settled on my vision and I thought it could be painted that way. I'm quite pleased with the result, though it is perhaps a bit more abstract than some of my other paintings of the same areas.

The other big news is that my wife and son and I are all getting ready to go back to North Carolina this Thursday. It has been around three and a half years since we have visited, and in that time I have not seen anyone from the North Carolina side of my family, except my mom and grandmother. It's going to be a lot of fun to introduce them to our son, who most of them have not met, and show him around the places where I grew up. I was explaining to him what green grass was the other day - telling him that it only grows in Arizona in places were there is sufficient water, usually irrigation. "Where daddy grew up, it grows everywhere!" I told him...a point largely lost on my busybody 1 year old.

One of the reasons for our visit is that I will be recieving the "Rising Star Award" from the alumni association of Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, NC. I was a student at Lenoir-Rhyne and have my degree from there - and I had a wonderful four years of experiences that have always left me holding Lenoir-Rhyne in great esteem. So it is a fine compliment to receive an award from the University, and I am looking forward to visiting there again. I will also be donating a painting called "Rhyne Building, through the Trees" that will ship to Lenoir-Rhyne a little later in the summer to be featured at a spot on campus that is yet to be determined.

It is a funny feeling getting back to visit one's roots. For 11 years I have lived outside of my home state of North Carolina, and to be honest - life being what it is, there has been very little in me that looks back. Life, to me, always seemed to be primarily focused on where you are at the time - and for the years that we've been in Arizona this has been our reality. But still there is something you understand instinctively when you go back to the places where you once were; when you see the old high school football field where you watched Friday nite games. When you see the parks and places YOU played when you were a kid. When you see pink dogwoods blooming and remember climbing the trees. When you hear the soft southern drawl of the people from North Carolina and realize that you are back among your own. It can't help but be something understood, because I guess even the trees understand the roots and the ground that they came from.

Sometimes it's not lost on me that I have been the oddball son who disappeared into the American West! I think of the untold thousands who saw their family members get in wagons or on horses and make their way out to gold fields, ranches, and all manner of wild and open ranges. I have seen so many amazing things in my life and I wouldn't change any of it. Being from small town North Carolina was crucial in one particular way; that is, it made me intensely curious about the outside world. To other people, the small town life is more about comfort and familiarity and that's all they really need and that makes them happy. To me, on the other hand, it only made me want to know about the wider world.

So here is a toast to the Tarheel state and all the family and friends we are looking forward to seeing again. And OF COURSE I will have my camera ready, always on the lookout for a new landscape that I can paint.

As I sign off I do want to send condolences to my own extended family - we lost our uncle Brian Walters on the 22nd of April. Brian was a good man and he will be greatly missed.

And as that Bon Jovi song went - "Who says you can't go home?"

www.neilmyersart.com

Ten Years After, a Decade Between Canvases

This week I have finished doing a touch up job on a painting of two bouquets of wildflowers. This 36 x 36 inch painting was actually done in 2008, but I had hung it on my wall, feeling that - even after it was signed and initially considered done, that it needed something else. Trouble was, I didn't know what it was then - so I put it on my living room wall for around a year and now that I've just done the rework, I'm glad I did. A very mediocre work is now a tolerably good work, and so naturally I found myself reassured that it would not have been the right thing to put the work out in a gallery in 2008.

We have just celebrated the holidays, and a hair's breath after came the new year that is also leading us into a new decade. Of course every self-indulgent blogger with a keyboard and an itch in their brains is gonna take a moment and be philosophical about where they've been, and what has happened in the course of the previous ten years. As I explained to my infant son, that a year is actually quite meaningless in the cosmological sense, or in the greater sense of the world. In the span of the universe, a year isn't even one zillionth of a grain of sand on the beach of existence - however it is the human mind that assigns meaning to time as it relates to time on earth. I always liked the line from the Kansas song "Dust in the Wind" where they sing "nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky." And when I think of this I think of the beautiful rock peaks of the Catalina Mountains that gaze down on our home - and I remember that they looked exactly the same, virtually unchanged, as they did in old historical photos taken over a hundred years ago. The mountains care very little for human time.

So when I rewind ten years and remember where I was as we entered the year 2000, I was actually standing in the middle of Quay Street in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, with my wife and two friends, screaming and yelling with the thousands of revelers - and toting around a bottle of 101 Southern Comfort. That night I saw a long parade of craziness - a drunk girl walking on broken glass on Queen street. Another guy hurling a whiskey bottle from to top of the Hobson street bridge - and it actually HIT a guy down below on the shoulder. I got kissed by some random girl yelling "Happy New Year!" (Jelena didn't hold that against me...I didn't have a chance to fight the girl off! ...Or did I even try :) And I remember calling my mom later that night to let her know that the Y2K business didn't mean anything - everything was still functioning, in New Zealand anyway - and so it seemed the world would continue after all.

Around that time I was doing a handful of paintings of the North Shore bays in Auckland, trying to fancy myself a new Monet who was going to capture the various times of day on canvas, as the light glanced off the sea. But I quickly bogged down in not being entirely satisfied with the effects I was getting. I then began to do more writing than painting, and this trend continued, for the most part, until sometime in 2002. Jelena had been giving me subtile hints, like buying me canvases and leaving them on the seat of our car - and I began to rethink painting and have some original ideas. And when I showed some paintings to friends where I worked at the Sebel Suites - they started immediately wanting to buy them. And I sold them for some almost criminal bargains - being only too flattered at the time that people were crazy enough to pay what they did for those works. One painting, a painting of Otago on the South Island of New Zealand - even caused a prolonged argument between Jelena and I because she insisted that we keep it, even after several friends wanted to buy it. And we still have it today; it hangs in our living room.

So I guess we can say the seed had been planted - or more correctly, RE-planted at the end of our stay in New Zealand, in 2002 and early 2003. When I came to New Mexico in 2003, there was something firmer and more determined, and more vibrant in my works. Even I noticed it, and found myself curious to move along with it and see how it went. Now after countless shows and sales and successes, it all seems like a million years ago. And it's only with effort that I realize that it was only 7 or 8 years ago.

I don't really know if I can look over the past decade and say that great leaps have been made in the world at large. In some respects that is always true, as science and technology advance, to whatever extent we secure our own lives, without really contributing to a fullness of life - or giving it deeper meaning. But I, like many Americans who took it personally - was a different person after the 9/11 attacks. After the shock of the experience wore off a bit, what remained was the lesson that human depravity was alive and well. And that for every brave soul who would save a friend, or even risk themselves for a stranger - the black heart of human cruelty abounds to this day. The more I thought about it, it became clear to me that if humanity persists in being unable or unwilling to surmount the differences of nation, tribe, religion, and cultural and lifestyle differences, then there is no reason to believe that the world will change in the slightest. At least not in the ways that really can affect human happiness. So in one sense we have indeed advanced ourselves with lots of groovy gadgetry and apps that turn our phones into portable back-scratchers, etc - but we have not managed to secure peace and understanding for future generations. As my writings and concerns are largely about Art, I think that only when societies stabilize and learn to coexist with some quality of understanding, then art will thrive. I should be pleased entirely if no artist ever had to paint about war again - no more "Third of May"s by Goya, no more glistening bayonets to the horizon. But I know better, and do not expect such a fortune anytime soon.

Art will go on. Jim Morrison said in an interview that the music of The Doors could not help but reflect that chaos surrounding it; a very true and profound statement when one considers he was talking about the late sixties and all the cultural and societal changes, and the Vietnam War. And the Art of 2010 will no doubt do the same. I, on the other hand, actually hope that somewhere in my own work there will be some grasp of the larger span of time, and if one looks at my work and feels the heat of nature and color, then I would be fine if no concept of time was applied to it. A mountain painting in 1910 of 2010 ought to glow in paint, so as to tell us something grander about life in general.

I've always appreciated this quote from John Adams:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

So let's hope that a world of "painting, poetry, music, etc" can replace the fragmented world we know today. Not for the reiteration of pipe dreams of fantasies, but for a better life for our children, and the countless generations to come. Let us work towards a foundation upon which art can rest firmly, and do its part to contribute to human fulfillment and human happiness.

I wish everyone a happy, healthy, and peaceful 2010!

www.neilmyersart.com