This is the first image for a small artwork, My Back Pages.   Bob Dylan wrote the music for this artwork,  but I remember the song from listening to the band The Byrds.  The Byrds recorded a number of Dylan’s music, including Turn, Turn, Turn, and another favorite of mine, Mr Tambourine Man. I have always wanted to paint this music, mainly because of a line from the music:”Ah, but I was so much older than, I’m younger than that now.”   For me, they where words in a song that I liked and I guessed defined only as a 60’s feeling.  Today, I can probably best summarized their appeal by a quote by George Bernard Shaw “youth is wasted on the young.”

What convinced me to finally attempt this artwork was  this My Back Pages video, from 1992.  The video includes these artists: Bob Dylan, George Harrison (The Beatles), Neil Young, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Roger McGuinn (The Byrds),  and the back up band, Booker T & MGs:

I am using colors that give this painting that look of the 1960’s.  That means, I will be using browns, muted greens and blues.

One reason I picked this music  was that I could do a smaller work ( this one is under 27 inches in length), in a shorter amount of time. That did not work. It never works.  The size of an artwork only affects a predictable amount of time. The real unknown, and largest consumer of my time, is the problem solving in the constructing of these artworks.  That leaves me with my this reasoning behind doing smaller works, and that is that they are easier to store, and sell. Big artworks create a wonderful first impression, but since I am in the beginnings of adding Art Fairs to help promote this artwork, smaller paintings make sense in every way.  So there it is. Until I can find a Gallery to represent my work, I am becoming the weekend Gallery in a white tent. At least, I am not selling them out of the trunk of my car.

Scott Von Holzen