IMAGES | STATEMENT | RESUME

Excerpt from Marcia Myers Twenty Years Published by Hudson Hills Press with text by Dr. Renee Shea

Synaesthesia

Myers believes wholeheartedly in color memory, a painting's ability to transport the viewer to a time or place through association: the earth tones of Tuscany, the paradoxical blend of shimmer and depth in the lapis blue of the Arena Chapel, Pompeii reds. Yet these paintings evoke more than color memory; they treat the viewer to the sensual pleasure known as synaesthesia, the concurrent response of two or more senses. Indeed, Myers has an uncanny ability to trigger such responses, perhaps because of the multilayerings in the paintings that link ancient and contemporary worlds, perhaps because of the associations of the paintings with the actual geography of a place. The colors associated with the Mediterranean or light suffused reds of Rome or a chapel in Padua bring to mind temperatures, smells, sounds as well as visual perceptions. The geometric proportions of her work, always reflective of the golden mean regardless of the scraped surfaces, varying saturations of pigment, and optical vibrations of colored light that Myers creates in her paintings elicit tactile responses. The paintings beckon, invite, challenge, seduce -- and it all starts with color.