We are pleased to be launching a portfolio of several paintings by Aidan Myers, the result of a transformative long-term residency at The Lake House in India. Read our interview with the artist on this new body of kaleidoscopic works documenting his time in Maharashtra.
By Sophie Heatley | 16 Jul 2024
Sitting across from Aidan Myers, coffee cup in hand, separated by a laptop screen and the endearing fuzziness of video calls we’ve all come to know so well, I feel like I’m catching up with an old friend. I first reached out to Myers last year about running a feature with us after what would be his second long-term residency in India, this time at The Lake House in Maharashtra. Several months later, here we are, each in our own respective shelter from the confused summer drizzle, wondering why anyone would want to return to this dreary weather.
While Myers’ unwavering loyalty to painting has remained unchallenged over the last decade, the artist has quietly drawn away from pure abstraction in recent years—the hallmark of his earlier works—toward more subject-focused pieces on the Indian landscape. When presented with his works, two words spring to my mind: immediate and immersive. There’s something deeply personal yet un-contained about them, emphasised by their sheer scale (some reaching over eight feet in height, some small, sensitive snapshots) and Myers’ immersion in the painting process.
For several weeks, Myers painted with only the local monkeys as an audience. Submerged in the ripe reds, rampant purples, and boisterous greens that now dominate his mind, Myers became separated from the mundane realities of everyday life his mentor used to say “got in the way of art.” Painting until 3 am, breaking only to swim, visit the market, or catch a few hours of sleep, Myers gazed directly into the belly of the beast and was joyfully devoured by the arhythmic and tempestuous Indian climate.
The first time Myers went to India was in 2018, at the tail end of the monsoon season. As he describes his first encounter with this new kaleidoscopic world, I am, too, swept into his memories of this luscious land and “all its colours, and all its textures, and all its life.” When I look at Myers’ paintings, I can hear the deluge of rain, feel the luminous light reflecting off water droplets into the artist’s eye, and I can sense the “pure chaos” of this magnificent place.
Although Myers often begins by observation, he is less interested in presenting how things look and more interested in striking a chord between colour, texture, and subject. “I paint until there’s some kind of harmony between tensions” or until there’s a balance between “the unpredictability” of nature, the painter, and the paint.
We discuss the plurality of meaning surrounding painting from observation. Observation doesn’t have to be an optical exercise; we can observe bodily sensation through feeling, and we can observe a thought with the mind’s eye. There are many things we can see without looking outwards. This is important to note, as many of Myers’ paintings take months to complete; as his physical view alters, so does his interior life, lending to the intensely interpretative nature of his works.
Although (fairly) unattached to the outcome, the painting process doesn’t feel directionless. For harmony to take place, two or more things must come together. In this case, subject and feeling, and a mix of present tense and past. These landscapes don’t merely depict the scenery, but transmit Myers’ sensorial experience of them. The humidity on goose-bumped skin, the heaving breath of old, wizened trees, the heaviness of descending cloud cover, and the chorus of incalculable birds and beasts come alive in his work. As he felt it at the time, at the painting’s origin, and how it felt remembering the experience, again and again.
It strikes me that to draw so deeply from an empirical experience, to mine a previous time and continuously build upon it, one must be fully immersed in that original moment. Myers agrees. “I think you have to connect with everything as much as possible,” he says. It’s hard to harness past experiences and creativity if you’re not present, then or now.
So what’s more powerful? More enticing? The painting’s origin story? Or the next chapter? Even when Myers “completes” the painting, its story doesn’t end there. While the memory of the artist lingers, it’s not really about them or their experience anymore; the painting continues to evolve and grow and warp depending on the space it lands in and the eyes that indulge it. Any illusion of control the painter may have had is relinquished.
“Many of my collectors treat my paintings like extensions of their family,” Myers shares with me. The works occupy a central place in their house, woven into the fabric of future memories of home. “One collector told me that their family eats around one of my paintings, which means it’s present in so many of their core family moments… it’s gone way beyond me just having this tussle with paint on canvas, it’s become something much greater than that.” As time goes on, these paintings take on a new identity. Painting is, in essence, a never-ending story. A memory ever in the making.
