Well, I thought it was time to do a video demonstration of my scrapping technique that I first used in early April 2020 on the project I Will. I’m writing this many days after I made this video, and have continued to scrap here and there to further my graffitiing of this musical portrait.

I have since the beginning of this art in 2006 used words to reinforce the artwork’s connection to the music I was portraying. My thinking is that the copyright people are touchy with the use of lyrics, so to not to offend I felt it was necessary to select words found in common language from the lyrics. That, of course, then diminished their impact. Still, I felt the words, much like the up and down flow, represented what I was portraying. By being selective in my words, I found I could create the added possibility of different meanings.

Recently, I have added more words to my artworks for a different purpose. I do this by breaking up sentences or phrases into smaller pieces and placing them randomly all about the canvas, like graffiti on a wall. Then, to negate their value as words, what do I do? I scrapped them away. It is the words’ presence, not their meaning is what I am after. It is like the artwork. I am not painting sheet music. I am portraying an up and down flow from the music.

By graffitiing the words, I am borrowing a technique used by Jean-Michel Basquiat where he would paint over words, as if so to say ignore them. I changed my mind. I agree with that. This is a continuation of a fundamental part of this art, whose principal theme has always been to portray music like a portrait painter: yea, it kinda looks like him, but it isn’t actually him, it’s a portrait.

Scott Von Holzen