This is Chasing Car’s first image from September 5th.  The main canvas  is 12 inches by 36 inches in length. This commissioned artwork is a test, by me, to see if I can do a small painting, to meet the needs of this special client. I don’t do small, ….until now, but why?.

I have heard this line more than any others, “Your paintings are too big.”   I say to them “I like big.”  They say “I don’t have a wall big enough.”  I say that is strange, “..  is your home all windows and doors?  Most of the time I do not get an answer.  But I tell them  In my modest house I can hang a sixteen foot canvas in my living room.  And I certainly can hang a 10 or more in the master bedroom, and six to eight footers on a number of other walls.  So than I say “I don’t get it” and that usually ends the conversation., and they go away. I do not know, maybe, big overwhelms them. Maybe, they cannot face, or deal with,  the look of real art. Maybe, they are only looking for decoration.  My works demand attention. Maybe that is just too much for some people to comprehend or to give in to. Maybe, my art scares them. Or maybe, they think it’s too much.  Whatever, their reasoning, I do my best to understand and fulfill my client needs, if it comes to that, and charge what I feel I think I need. That way we both are happy.  I do not want to do a lot of commission work, but it does build character and at times I like a challenge of a new artwork seen through their eyes and words. That way we both are happy. And anyway I wanted to see how small works.

I should mention a stylistic change the occurred  in the look of this background, compared to pretty much else I have produced. Actually, on another artwork I am working on the same time,  I painted the background in strong vertical blue shades, to match the beat of the music (more on that work tomorrow). I thought the up and down stripping  looked so good on that work, that I thought why not use it in a more modest form on this artwork. That also turned out nice. Interesting, how fluid a style can be if it just let it flow.

Here is Chasing Cars live:

This is Chasing Cars second image September 7th.  I struggled trying to figure out how the music was going to fit. I even decided, at one point,  that  one canvas was all that needed. I then changed my mind.   Finally, on Saturday I could see that all this artwork needed was one add-on canvas, nine-inch by twelve-inch.

I do have a number of smaller canvases, but not enough variety to use for a small work.  For now I need to build artworks from what I can find that is already stretched.  I do not have the time to cut and stretch custom sizes. And even though I do have thirty-six different size stretched canvases in stock, the smaller the overall artwork, the smaller the options. That  was what was causing my problems with this artwork.

Originally, I thought I needed to mount two canvases because of the flow of the music, the words. My problem was that adding two small canvases to the one already small background canvas created an unbalance  To fit the music I would need to place one of the canvases a few inches from the left edge.  The other extra canvas I would have mounted on the far right edge, and beyond.  My issue is when I am dealing with these smaller overall size artworks, the options I have for still smaller canvases to accent the background become limited. The far right eleven by fourteen inch canvas caused the artwork to look too heavy on that side. Even the eight by sixteen canvas on the left side of the artwork was not enough to give this artwork balance. Those two added small canvases where too big and appeared to be dominating the 12 inch wide background canvas. I had to abandon the right canvas. Doing that I could then see this artwork stabilizing. That move was unusual for me because  the music on those two canvases would have been similar. But that is one example how an artist’s style changes, out of necessity. Balancing an artwork ranks high on my list.

Scott Von Holzen