Lance Myers Renders a Suspended State of Perfection

You’re not going to hear the glorious din of legendary ska-punk band Gals Panic at West Sixth’s elegant Wally Workman Gallery on the first Saturday of August, 6-8pm. Nor will there be a screening of A Scanner Darkly within that storied residence of world-class art this weekend. But, listen, the person who helped animate that Linklater film? The same longtime Austinite who was also frontman for the crowd-galvanizing Gals Panic? That’s Lance Myers, and he’s the artist whose newest paintings will be featured in a solo show at the Workman gallery, in a display of oil-on-canvas creations that reveal a splendor of “lush blooms and figures rendered in a suspended state of perfection, while creatures of decay – beetles, pill bugs, the slow agents of entropy – crawl quietly in the foreground,” as the gallery heralds it.

“The bugs kind of justify themselves,” says the artist. “They’re odd little creatures, with beautiful, shiny shells that can pick up glints of light – and that’s fun to paint. The Old Masters who did still-life paintings, a lot of times those pieces were meant to represent the transience of life, how we’re only here for a very short time. So the rotting fruit would represent decay, a memento mori to remind you that We’re All Gonna Die, and they’d sometimes include actual skulls and things like that. So, part of my reason is to include an element of how, in most people’s eyes, bugs are unclean, unbeautiful creatures – and there’s the contrast.”

This new exhibition, “As We Unmagic the Self,” is a visual epiphany of still lifes, figurative arrangements, and floral exuberance, each of bold realism and all captured in the most compelling array of colors this side of James Jean. No wonder that Myers is also the cover story of American Art Collector this month, right? No wonder that other works of his will be in a group show at NYC’s Arcadia Contemporary later in August. No wonder that his 2025 debut show at the Workman, “Frequencies in the Static Bloom,” sold out within minutes.

No wonders anywhere, except on the interior walls of that cultural bastion next door to Clarksville’s ever-shuckin’ Clark’s Oyster Bar. “I’ve been going to Wally Workman Gallery for decades,” says Myers, “and I always thought it was such a great space and great people. But, at first, I wasn’t sure I was good enough for them. I was very intimidated, because their whole roster is just, it’s full of stars. The only parallel I know, it’s kind of like getting signed to a music label. I’ve seen, so many times, friends’ bands get signed, and they get all excited, and then the record comes out and it doesn’t do anything, and they get dropped a year later, and it’s over. You know? And I was afraid that was gonna happen to me, like, I’ll sign with Wally and they’ll believe in me, but I’m gonna let ’em down, it’s not gonna work out? But it was the opposite – things turned out great! They were like, ‘We’ll try to sell your works one by one, and if things take off, then we’ll schedule a solo show.’ And they sold everything I brought to them. I think it was six, maybe eight months into our contract that they said, ‘OK, let’s have a show.’” 

And now here’s the second show, opening on Saturday, and – we can’t see this elsewhere in Texas, can we? “My work is exclusive with the Workman Gallery within a certain mile radius,” says Myers, “so it’s exclusive in Austin, for sure.” The painter smiles, bright as a chrysanthemum. “They’re my artistic home here.”

This article appears in July 31 • 2026.