Joseph Palme Myers - paintings, drawings, prints
About This Site
I have spent many many hours over many years drawing and painting, and have ended up with a lot of paintings and drawings. Much of the work deals with self exploration and expression - experiments with capturing on a two dimensional plane a projection of some sort of the energies, essences, passions, visions, inner feelings and interactions with the world, good and bad. Some are successful and some failures. I'm never sure which is which.
Since so much energy went into creating all of this, I figure I may as well put it on out there for anyone to look at in hopes some of it might make a connection of some sort. So here they are flaws and all. I hope the viewer gets something out of taking a look. If any piece makes a connection with you, I take that instance as a success.
About Joseph Palme Myers
Biography
Joseph Palme Myers (Joe) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 6, 1949, the second of three children of Winifred Palme Myers and Joseph Nash Myers. He grew up in North Wales, Pennsylvania, Dedham, Mass. and Atlanta, Georgia, and then back to Massachusetts, graduating from Duxbury High School in 1966. Joe graduated from Georgia Tech in 1970 with a BS in Applied Math. He taught High School Math and Science for two years before embarking on a career in computer software. Throughout it all he made time for painting and drawing.
In 1969 while still in college, Joe married Valerie Ann Walker of Atlanta Georgia. They are currently living in Marietta, Georgia. They have two children and two grandchildren.
Joe attended art classes at the Architecture Department while at Georgia Tech, studied watercolor painting under Marshall Joyce of Marshfield Mass in 1976 and studied etching at the Atlanta College of Art in 1978-1979.
Artistic Background and Method
As far back as I remember I have been fascinated with creating art. My grandfather, Otto Palme, was a sign painter and letterer who also enjoyed drawing and oil painting. He provided some of my early inspiration and training. One of Otto's sisters, Evelyn Eastwood, was a professional artist in New York in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and later in Hyannis on Cape Cod, where she continued producing art well into her 90’s. She also provided inspiration, guidance and encouragement.
My artistic style, if one can be identified, is rooted in expressionism and essentialism, with a waft of surrealism from time to time. Drawing from nature, imagination, dreams and memory, the intention is to project on canvas, as truthfully as I can, the feeling, dreams and experiences of life I have perceived, and to provide a parallax view into the existent. I search for the music-like values of color and form as a means of displaying the harmonies and discords of life. I work in oil, watercolor, gouache, ink, various drawing media and have experimented with intaglio and relief prints.
Many of my works are night scenes, I suppose because I've done most of my painting at night since it wasn't my day job. In my more recent paintings, a theme I have been pursuing involves scenes with constellations in a night sky with some stars obscured by the landscape or seascape horizon, but with foreground lights of some sort juxtaposed so as to complete the constellation. My most recent work consists of illustrations for a children's book I wrote, "Joseph and the Bumble Bee" which can be viewed by clicking this link.