Naive Melody Final image.  This image turned out to be a lot of fun to create with the music being the first surprise and the blue and white stripped ‘tie’ the final. This painting breaks ground and continues on from the July Birthday work.  It will be in the studio only a couple weeks before it begins its new life, so it will be studied and compared to, and admired hopefully absorbing and dispersing its effect on this art over the next few canvases.

First image of Ev’ry time we say goodbye.  It took two days to find the right music to start this next work.  The music done by Simply Red was the first encounter with this song many years back.  This is a Cole Porter tune and the musical phrase that is going to be used comes from the ‘major to minor’ line.  All that was thought of first was that this was a slow, torch song, that should use a lot of blues.  Frustrating the choice was that there could not be found a ‘definitive’ musical version of this music.  The searching  got strange when up popped a cover by Red Stewart, that almost killed this piece.   No mater, no version was done by Billie Holiday, and there was no access to the  Sara Vaughn version.  Even listening to the Simply Red version, seemed inadequate.  The best versions that where available are by Ella and especially Diana Krall, which comes close.  This is great music and this music deserves that one special voice that captures it completely.

Then the photo of the 1932 Picasso painting Nude, green leaves and bust, that sold for over $106 million, caught the attention, because of its value and its use of blues and greens, with a mix of supporting colors.  At first this was thought of as a ‘color guide’ for Ev’ry but for some unknown reason that thought changed to the second version of the Van Gogh portrait of Dr. Gatchet that has disappeared.  Those blues, the paint technique of cross brushing, and the use of the red to contrast the blue changed the plan.

So, this second image does not look anything like Dr. Gatchet.  That is correct, the more blue that was put down the more sense of nothing going on here surfaced.  The silver push this work quickly into the unknown, guaranteeing this painting will  never be a tribute to either Picasso and Van Gogh, but to the music.

Scott Von Holzen