From his studio in North Philadelphia, Charlie J. Meyers paints.
Using oils and acrylics on canvas, paper and linen, he creates works of gestural abstraction and portraiture that explore transitional psychic spaces to examine and celebrate concepts of intimacy, altered memory, and the contemporary disabled experience.
Meyers’ experience being disabled and trans informs how and what he makes.
“Living in a disabled body brings me to an almost constant present-moment awareness,” Charlie says.
A month after finishing his Master of Fine Arts in Painting, Meyers was hit by a truck while cycling home through the streets of Montreal. He sustained a brain bleed, spinal cord injuries, whiplash, and other long-term injuries.
“Over the next year, I watched a lot of my physical and cognitive functions disintegrate,” Meyers recalls.
“The accident left me unable to paint, in severe pain, and sometimes walking with a cane.”
Meyers spent the next eight years in full-time physical therapy while working to support himself, and navigating the medical system with a traumatic head injury. His return to his painting practice was slow.
“When you have to fight to learn how to paint again, just to hold a brush, it becomes your entire world.”
To adjust to his new reality, Meyers had to re-imagine and re-build his entire life — including his art practice.
“My constellation of neurological conditions cause my energy to oscillate like a wave. In low points, I am physically unable to work on large paintings. There’s just no energy left in my body and I switch mediums.”
“Conversely, when that energy wave swells, there can be a huge amount of force suddenly rushing out of me through the paint onto bigger and bigger surfaces.”
In March 2024, multinational cosmetics brand La Mer launched a major campaign featuring Meyers and his work.
La Mer was particularly drawn to his latest collection, “Dark Bloom,” which comes from the concept of blooming out of a really difficult time or moment and his experience of riding that wave of energy.
“It’s specifically inspired by the ocean,” Meyers says. “For me, the ocean embodies a majestic and potent force. It has this profound significance as the symbol of the sublime.”
Creating and curating
Meyers has also brought his skills as a fine artist to the high-end fashion industry. From 2019 to 2021, he managed the production and assembly of haute couture clutch handbags by designer Jeffrey Levinson, which are carried by luxury boutiques such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, and Net-A-Porter.
The advent of COVID-19 and the disruption and isolation it brought inspired Meyers to create a collection of watercolours on paper honouring love and intimacy.
Working from his home studio during quarantine in the Spring of 2020, Meyers produced “Tender,” a collection inspired by the concept of Spring fever, invoking a sense of restless desire for romance and social connection. Works are painted in floral and earth tones on hot and cold pressed watercolour paper.
In 2020, Meyers began an online curatorial and community building project, the Moon Cheese Curator.
“I started the Moon Cheese Curator business to mentor and support other disabled artists,” he explains. “I know what it means to enter hell and have to find your way out.”
Through this project, Meyers facilitates connection and discussion with artists, curators, collectors and others and examines the interface between the body and art production.
“I want every artist living with disabilities to know there is no shame in who you are. You do not need to be ‘cured’ in order to create.”
“My goals for creating are to continuously make bodies of work that are vulnerable, unique, and fearless. I do not want to be contained by expectation, rules, or social media.”
“My goal is total freedom, always.”
Meyers’ works on canvas, paper and linen are collected internationally and have been shown in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
He has been featured in Create Magazine, Canvas Rebel, Shoutout LA, Alien Literary Magazine, My Chronic Brain, Clover and Bee, The Purposeful Mayonnaise, PxP Contemporary, Vantage Art Projects, and podcasts including I Like Your Work, and the Bold Creatives Collective.
