Month: October 2010

Closeup of the Christmas painting 2010.  This painting will be reproduced on canvas photographic paper, sign and numbered and sent to all those who have purchased an art piece.   A slightly different version goes out to relatives and friends; but the painting is the same on each type of card.  Since this is a Christmas theme artwork, the colors will be pushed more to the greens and reds, and cheerful blues and some white to remind many of snow.   Usually these canvases are not experimental.  Mostly, they are smaller in size and done to celebrate the holiday season.  That sounds good, lets go with that.

Back in 2006 it was late in the year when the idea came to do a Christmas card with a painting.  That year the painting was printed directly on the card and the song was Joy to the World.  It is realized that Joy to the World is a classic pop song and nothing more, but the words Joy Joy Joy where used so it made it kinda Christmas like.  That is how it started.

This years words are ‘the babe of Mary.”  If it would not have been a painting that was represented on a Christmas card the words chosen from What Child is This would have simply been ‘the babe Mary.’   The words ‘the babe’  still  give this painting a twisted meaning, which is always the goal when words are used in a artwork.  Rarely, do artwork words resemble in meaning similarly found words in the music.   That is done a purpose to separate the art from the music and to see if the viewer is paying any attention: generally they are not.

Scott Von Holzen

This canvas is moving slowly.  Because of it smaller size, 20 inches by 5 feet this work should be completed by the end of this weekend. Yet, I do not think that will happen. Mostly distractions that have nothing to do with art, and self questioning that also has nothing to do with art,  are interfering with the art.   This will of course be overcome because the yearning  to move forward is always there and always pushing everything ahead. And when the all  of all things is put into perspective the art is what matters.

Since this Christmas 2010 piece has a fairly straight forward flow of notes across the canvas, this will force more effort to pop this movement to give the work life. So, it looks simple  and it could be an easy paint-by-numbers work; but that is not expected.  The expectations that grow as each work progresses to the finish, prevents that.  It may not be radical; but it just may surprise how each new work builds on the past and with opens the path forward.

Scott Von Holzen

This is a short post on the 2010 Christmas painting.  Having issues with how to surround the red center.  I went with a too dark band across the top and had to pretty much paint that out.  I do not have enough space to accurately add a extra ledger line which the dark area at the top was in issue wish.  So, I painted it out.  That is what can be easily done on the small 5 foot canvas: with just a little amount of acrylic paint  new ideas can be tried and less new ideas abandon.  That is the reason to paint smaller canvases.

There needs to be some more tweaking of the base before the notes can go down.  Luckily these Golden acrylic paints dry in a few minutes, with the help of a fan.  It has been noticed that over the years the base of these artworks has become just as important as the notes.  At first that was not the attitude, the notes where everything, and the background was just that something to fill the rest of the canvas.  Over the last couple of  years that has changed and the background has to stand on it’s own before even one note is drawn.  Even more,  this last year, the emphasis has shifted from the notes to the background.  Today, the challenge is to create a stand-alone  base and then add the interest and feeling and meaning of the work with the addition of the notes.   The notes makes the background richer, and seperates this art from the many thousands of other’s  abstracted wall hangings.

Scott Von Holzen