The modest artist says his sense of perspec- tive derives from what he describes as a sense of rightness. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s simply my innate ability to see something and just know the perspective is off. It can be a horizon line in a paint- ing or a line in a three-dimensional piece of art,” he shares. “How lines move, intersect and relate to each other and the entirety of a piece, be it a painting or an abstract sculpture, is either visually appealing and right or simply doesn’t work.”
This ability to understand when perspective is pleasing is important for an artist who makes landscapes that are emotionally based, not representationally accurate. He paints not from a photograph or looking out a window, but from his imagination. Still, he sees this sense of rightness as pivotal. “One stray line can ruin an entire painting,” he says. As evidenced in a quick study of his work, lines are fundamental in his approach to perspec- tive. Like many of Vincent van Gogh’s landscapes, Myers employs lines to hold in his brilliant, Fauvist colors. This allows his trees, roads and suns to appear bolder and, simply, more there. Myers is in uenced partly by 19th-century Japanese wood- cuts, and perhaps the occasional bonsai-looking tree in a painting is a nod to this inspiration. Often, Myers will foreground a tree or a house and subtly vignette his canvases in darker colors to provide a sense of depth.
Crucial to orienting a speci c perspective is Myers’s choice to paint mainly with a single brush—“as big a brush as I can,” he admits. This tactic, though it may seem limiting, actually enables him to create a more democratic focus. Everything is accorded, roughly, the same specificity. As a result, viewers aren’t drawn to particular parts of a painting more than other areas. Rather, their attention is cap- tured by the entirety of the landscape. This effect is easily understood when looking at The Internal Landscape (page xx), a massively scaled vista of golden valleys, sun- ecked water and corduroyed plains. The eye wanders across the work—which measures 41⁄2 feet x 7 feet—but isn’t exactly drawn anywhere in particular. This is intentional and grants the entirety of the painting a splendid presence.