This is the ninth painting in the Vivaldi’s Four Seasons series.  This artwork is over fifteen feet in length. The fall image above is a quick composite of three different images.  The dark purple line is there to unify all the different canvases. Such an early look at this next project gives you an idea of the planning that goes into creating these paintings.  In the past I use to fit the music to the canvas, but as you can see today’s artworks all the canvases exist to fit the music.  The four 12 x 24 inches canvases, that you see rising above the main image, are key to this work.

I have also found an interesting take on this part of the music.  In H.C. Robbins Lando book Vivaldi voice of the baroque, there is this sentence that speaks to the part I will be painting: “The goldfinch has trills and very high alternating notes, of soft summer winds.”  I looked up pictures of European goldfinches.  Their prominent colors, that I will be able to use, are the browns, yellow and a bright deep red.  Right now, I am planning to paint those four small panels in red.  Yellow, with different shades of lighter browns I may use for some stripping patterns.  I started last night with a yellow-green base on the first panel, that will quickly change to blues.  I am thinking that blue colors will represent the wind, which will probably be an interesting challenge to try to recreate. The wind analogy comes from the words that where chosen from the Summer Vivaldi Sonnet:  “The North-wind appears nearby and suddenly,” or for another translation, “Soft breezes stir the air… but threatening north wind sweeps them suddenly aside.”

The hope is that this work will not take two months to complete. For more  of story, and history of this series,  you can go the Vivaldi page, where you will find pictures and videos of the first eight completed artworks.

Scott Von Holzen