This is a studio final image of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons Autumn Allegro.  This thirteen foot canvas has a busy and interesting look.  Usually, I spend multiple days cleaning, and touching up a painting, but strange this work took only needed a couple of days work to add the finish look. The most tedious part was the painting and finishing up of the words.  There was a lot of a’s and c’s that required an effort so that they appeared similar to each other. There was some concern about all the bluish notes, thinking maybe they where too cold looking, so I countered that with the browns on the four raised panels.  Since this is late autumn, at least where I live, it can get very cold, so the use of violet is a valid late fall color.  I then made an effort to put more late fall colors back into the work with the stems and the beams of the music. Some of the odd fall colors including the color green, are there to simply pop out parts of the work, and to add color interest.

Usually, I can just turn around and take a look at the finish work as I type, but I have already removed it from the easel, so that I could prep the canvases for the next Vivaldi which is Winter Allegro. My prepping of the canvases is applying three layers of gesso, and I have no other room but next to my easels to do this, so out the Autumn Vivaldi had to go to avoid splashing it with white paint. I am going to wire this artwork so that I can hang it in our living room, removing a favorite of mine Spring Danza Pastorale.

I spent two nights figuring out how to arrange the canvases, to best work with the music.  Finally, after multiple changes and verification of my math,  and the switching out of the far right canvas to a much smaller 30 by 24, to create a better balance, it is time to blot and screw all the pieces together.

Scott Von Holzen