Gary Mayer Unveils His Artistic Visions: A Divided Eye

By Robert Brune

MARGARETVILLE — This past weekend on Saturday the Longyear Gallery in the Commons of Margaretville opened with Gary Mayer’s solo exhibition, A Divided Eye. The title of this show refers to the diversity of his extraordinary gifts in painting and sketches. As Gary explains it, his creations are reflective of landscape contemporary expressionism and abstract art styles, which he believes complement each other. Although, if you flip through his portfolio, you may see the prism of his talents, including shades of M.C. Escher designs and playful self-portrait sketches. In an interview with Gary a few days prior to the opening of this show, I spoke with him as he explained some of his influences, one of whom was James Ensor. Ensor is associated with the 1880’s – 90’s Brussels Les XX group of painters which includes such greats as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Georges Seurat. The style of Ensor is best characterized by a writer for the Guardian, Boyd Tonkin in his article in 2016.

“You could stuff a student textbook with the “isms” that Ensor arguably pioneered from surrealism to symbolism, expressionism, fauvism, and post-modernism. A stylistic nomad, he not only roved among landscape, portraiture, still life, fantasy, satire, and caricature but often whisked them together into a tipsy burlesque of skewed and addled forms.

Evidence of how well celebrated Gary is within the local art community, in attendance at the opening, Christopher Broadwell of the Roxbury Arts Group, “Gary’s art is fantastic and so appropriate for this area because he captures historic and scenic reality, but at the same time opens you to questions of what’s behind it.” Returning to our conversation on the Thursday prior to the opening we discussed his series of sunflowers. In this show was the magnificent ‘Sunflowers of Autumn’. Gary talks about this piece, “I was working this construction job. We’d go up this road every day. It was bleak in the winter. There were these sunflowers that were bent over, looked like they were weeping. I thought it really summed up here in the winter, the way it twists people.”

Gary grew up in Detroit with an attraction to punk rock music. When asked about the music scene in Detroit, “Well, I loved Iggy Pop. I saw the Stooges at least five or six times. Definitely the first three albums of the Stooges had an influence on me.” He would go to a club called Bookies where he saw bands such as the Ramones, John Cale of the Velvet Underground, and the British band Gang of Four. From Detroit he moved to Baltimore to attend the Baltimore Institute of Art. He spoke fondly of seeing an exhibit of Albert Pinken Ryder a few times, “It was one of the best shows, ever.” After finishing art school made his way to Brooklyn, NY. Then he settled in Bovina, NY 20 years ago. As we spoke about the painting ‘Pink Street Studio’ of his studio barn, he looks back on his life and living experiences of city life, “The one thing about being out there in Detroit or Brooklyn, the sky is kinda like an afterthought. But when you’re out on a plain, it makes everything else inconsequential.”

Bill Lynch is a local documentary filmmaker who’s in the process of filming a short film on Gary Mayer. Gary comes across as a very humble person, when asked if he was nervous about the documentary at all, “I’m not nervous about my work, but I don’t know how interesting I am. There’s a decent amount of time about me talking about my process. I mean, it’s interesting to me, but I’m not sure about how it’s going to communicate, if it’s interesting to anyone else. I don’t know we’ll see.” Bill Lynch says he should be finished with the half hour long documentary by the end of this summer.

Gary is also partners with Patrice Lorenz and Ted Hannan with their new art gallery called Art Up, around the corner from Longyear Gallery. On the same day as The Divided Eye opened, Art Up also had an opening exhibit “CARNIVAL!” Besides attracting quite a few people to these two openings, it was a surprise to see Lindsay Comstock, the curator, and Eddie Donoghue, the manager, of the 1053 Gallery in Fleischmanns make an appearance. They both do such an incredible job. It was great to see them come support this second exhibit of Art Up since opening their doors. Eddie Donoghue has four photos in the “CARNIVAL!” show, along with four other extremely talented artists. If you’re looking for an interesting day out, and might be seeking to purchase some intriguing artwork, this weekend is the final week of the “CARNIVAL!” exhibit, but Divided Eye runs through August 6th at the Longyear Gallery.

For a better idea of all the artists at the Longyear Gallery and Art Up, see their Instagram pages @LongyearGallery and @ArtUpMargaretville