Shedding Daylight

Gary Myers is an artist whose work I admire and whose blog I’ve followed for several years. He lives just north of Elmira, New York, in the memorably-named town of Horseheads.  His paintings, recognizable, unique and strangely stirring, have hung in such galleries as the West End in Corning, New York, the Principle in Alexandria, Virginia and the The Haen in Asheville, North Carolina.

A museum exhibition titled Internal Landscapes: The Paintings of GC Myers, officially opened at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York on August 18. Continuing through December 31, the show groups together larger paintings from the last few years with a few very early small pieces that represent the beginnings of his work. A highlight at the Fenimore is the first public showing of The Internal Landscape, a painting whose progress readers of Gary’s blog were able to follow.

The Pleasure of Smalls

 

Some of the best words in the world are old and rarely used. Unless you’re lapidicolous (given to living under a rock), you know that language is labile (unstable and given to change). Shakespeare’s “forsooth” and great-Grandma’s “tussy mussy” have disappeared from common speech, along with other archaic, old-fashioned and fussy words that help to trace the contours of an old-fashioned and fussier world.

Sometimes such words were meant to conceal as much as they revealed.  Euphemisms, nice little words and phrases like “passed away”, “concrete overshoes” and “broad across the beam” always have served as a kind of verbal code for cautious or bashful conversationalists.