Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons Autumn  II. Here is the Wiki link.  Scroll down to the Media section Autumn Movement II.  This canvas is 9 feet by 36inches (2.75m x 1m), so a 1000 pixel image, although bright on this screen, fails to capture the emotion and impact of the work. That is why all Art needs to be seen and not leafed through. Of course that does not explain my library with a large number of art books that have be collected over the last 40 years. It may be better understood to  known that I live in an area where  art masterpieces are scarce.   I remember once a long time ago, living in another small town, there arrived a tour bus at the local library. I was able to enter its narrow walk way and see my first Renoir. It was a small portrait, but that visit must have meant a lot to be still remembered, lets say again 40 years ago.

Listening to classic British rock the Zombies – She’s Not There.

The idea of this background is to make something special to the theme of this music, which is the quiet that comes with dusk.  Again, it would be nice if this background could stand alone as its own artwork but, I just do not see this happening.  Also, after the music is applied that background will be adjusted help push the music along, to increase interest, and to help dramatize this work.  At less that is the early thinking.  Everything evolves, especially the plan.

Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons Update with a 1500 pixel full image.  The background was at a finished point that it was thought it was time to lay down the music.  That is when the problems occurred.   It was discovered that there was not enough room to spread the music across this canvas.

In these canvases the music that is stylized is based on the voice or the G clef which is also called the Treble Clef.  But in this Vivaldi work it was important to the feel of this music to include interpretations of  two G-clefs and the bass clef.  In this Classical musical piece that would be Violino Principale along with Violino Primo, and for the bass you have the Alto Viola.

Well, there was a miss count and the amount of space that would be needed to represent this music with the length came up short.  After a lot of going back-en-forth, from adding on top of the original background different sizes of canvases, to reducing the size and spacing of the music, it was decided to stay with the original plan, and simple attach on a fourth canvas to the original three.

This piece will be painted a dark Prussian Blue to build a dramatic end to this music which softy fades out. The idea of placing a riser canvas on this work, just did not go with the music,  because much of the ending flows quietly through a number of bars.  The concern was not to break that flow, so that is why this one feet by 3 feet section was added.  Since this added canvas is slightly wider in depth, that extra depth was pushed forward to help make this section of the work stand out even more.

Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons image4 1500 pixels or ten feet (3m) in length.  As you can see this work has moved in a different direction, and now beginning to take on its own look.  It started with the painting of the left panel with a Prussian Blue wash, that lead to the free hand addition of the darker Prussian strips. That looked worked so the obvious next step was to heavy line the flat upper magenta color band.  That work, which lead to the additional lines across the lower bass section.  Next the hard orange line across the middle seem out-of-place and too reminiscent of the orange bars across the magenta.  After some failed attempts, a dark Prussian blue was used  that seemed to pull the canvas towards that final vertical Prussian add on.  It all worked with the final free handed lines being added to the top and middle sections.  The loosely handed addition of these lines across all of this work brought back a  touch of the feel of Mark Rothko, the artist that is a foundation of this art.

Now, it is a number of days later, so although there are no new pictures for this blog, it is important to know what is going on in my head. Most of this music is composed of half-notes , which is unusual for most music.  So, looking at what has been done in the past, the thought was lets fine a new idea.  I did, with the help of Leon Polk Smith.  Here is his image on ArtNet.

So, what has been going on the last few day is that I have started with Polk’s 30 inch work as an idea and turn it into 80mm circles to represent all the half-note music that flows through this Vivaldi piece.  Looking at the progress so far you would be hard pressed to see Polk’s influence, but it is there and credit must have its do.

Looking ahead it is easy to see  that a lot of this background is going to disappear with the addition of the many musical ties that musicality make that smooth sound from the start to the very end of this piece. Another realization is that this simple, musical piece is going to end up consuming more then average time, and will end up being a highly complicated visual artwork, a lot simpler to listen to then to paint.

Listening to Ray Charles – How Long has This Been Going On

Love from the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack

Scott Von Holzen