Month: August 2015

S_V_H With a little help from my friends image 1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

helpFromMyFriends_1This is the first image of With a little help from my friends. What made this good Beatles song great was this performance by Joe Cocker at Woodstock, in 1969:

The following  gives you, an documents for me,  a little detail about my working technique, beyond applying paint to canvas:

To entertain me, I of course, am always playing and listening to music in the background in my studio.  When I start a new artwork, I search my music collection for the music,  and then add other versions, by different artists that cover the music. I do this because at the start of a new work session, I listen to the music that accompanies the artwork, to get a better feel of the mood of the music, that then helps me choose what color range to work in. Listening to only one song, even though I might have a dozen covers, still gets boring soon. What I do then as in With a little help from my friends, I pick one word, such as ‘help’,  and then I see what songs in my catalog use that word.  In that way I get a lot of music about help, and helping, which, relates to the music for this artwork. Of the 20,000 plus songs that I have in my iTunes, I pulled 76 songs that have the word help in the song title or in the information for that song.

I have eight versions of With A Little Help From My Friends, mostly by Joe Cocker. Here is a partial list of the other songs from my With A Little Help From My Friends Play List:
I Need you, It’s Only Love, The Night Before, Help!, all from the album Help! by the Beatles, I Can’t Help Myself, The Four Tops, I Just Can’t Help Believin’, by Elvis Presley, Helpless, a big cover song, Neil Young, K. D Lang, The Band, by Crosby, Stills & Nash,  Help Me, by Joni Mitchel and Johnny Cash, You Can’t Help Me Now, by one of my favorites, Amiee Mann, I’m Free (Heaven Helps The Man), by Kenny Loggins, Heaven Help Me, Gretchen Wilson, Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man, by Billie Holiday, For the Good Times, by Kris Kristofferson,  Help Me Make It Through The Night, also by Kris Kristofferson, Can I Get Some Help, by James Brown, Mother’s Little Helper, The Rolling Stones, Can’t Help Falling In love, by UB40, Let’s All Help the Cowboys, by Waylon Jennings, Heaven Help Me, by Wynonna Judd, Help Me, by Van Morrison, and how could I leave out B. B. King and Help the Poor, Crying Won’t Help You, Outside Help,and the Beach Boys, Help Me Rhonda.  The list goes on.

meOnBikeHere is how I connect the picture of me with my bike and my art. For exercise I travel a six-mile route, averaging around five-minute miles. What makes the course interesting is near the end I have a small hill and then a large hill to climb. The small hill is the warm up. The big hill I cannot bike up it, although I do walk up it.  Instead I approach the big hill from the backside, which is has a more gradual pitch to the top, and an exciting down the front ride.  Of course the backside trip still is extremely demanding. What I have learned to help me overcome this climb is that as I start to climb the steep part of the hill I tilt my head down looking at my front wheel and only a few feet in from of me.  By doing this I lose the sense of the height of the incline, and focus only on pedaling through the next few feet in front of me.  And it works, when suddenly I am at the top of the hill,  and can than relax.  That is also how I approach this art by focusing on the artwork in front of me and not the next great art project or what I should do to become the truly fine, and known, artist I wish to become. In biking I  hill climb by seeing only the road in front of my wheel.  In art I do much the same: I follow the road in front of me.

Scott Von Holzen

 

S_V_H No Rain final Video

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

noRain_Final

This video sums up this work pretty good.  Although, I find my video performance lacking in production quality, they certainly reflect the person I currently am. They give me the incentive, and plenty of room to work with,  to up my public image.

S_V_H No Rain Final Image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

No Rain_Final

This is the final image a tribute painting to the music of Blind Melon, called No Rain.  What is different about this artwork is that I did not follow my normal flow pattern for the music:  horizontally from left to right. Rarely does it move vertically, which this artwork does.  In No Rain the music flows left to right starting with the top left panel. It then hops over to the top right panel. The music flow then moves, left to right across the larger bottom panel.  In order to improve the logic of this flow I decided to physically mount each panel at a different depth, creating a step movement in this work.

The following  side image shows these changes in canvas depth:

Side View No Rain

I did not have to do it this way.  An alternative design, typical of this art, would have been one longer horizontal combination of panels.  I could have also created a horizontal stepped look (actually never considered) to this work following such examples as this years Birthday Painting, and last years  Up on The Roof.  I choose neither of these paths, and at first I could not remember my original thinking about this artwork.  Then I remembered: if you listen to the music you will hear a  series of short pauses after the word ‘escape.’  What it  came down to was I wanted to create an artwork without displaying these stops in the music flow.  And yet I wanted to keep up the logical movement of the music across this artwork.  I realized I could reach these goals by placing each  ‘escape’ on a different level.

It all came down to this reasoning:  what convinced me to paint this music was the word, ‘escape.’  I wanted this artwork to focus entirely on that repeated word, and  so I eliminated the rests. The pauses are actually still there, it is in the change in-depth between the three canvases. I accomplished what the music does, but in my way.  I think any viewer who sees this work and says that word three times, will understand and find their own meaning  in this artwork. I know I did.

Scott Von Holzen