Author: Scott Von Holzen

I am currently renewing an artistic adventure that first started in 1974, and ended in the early 1980's. A casual comment restarted the quest in art in 2004. Now, at night I am surrounded by artworks done and in progress, shelves full of art books, my music collection playing through a classic NAD amp and a pair of solid, classic free standing speakers, my piano, violin, blues guitar, and saxophone. So all is musical no matter what I am up to in the studio. Since I was a kid I have had the urge to be creative Now, in my later sixties, I am determine to know. I want to follow this to the end to see what these paintings, and all this music amounts to. This is probably the last great adventure I will have, so I am all in. So, watch out for nonstop music, canvases with multiple panels, with paint spread thick or dribbled on, words with meaning, and results that will challenge, push the meaning of music, and may even splash back. This blog's real purpose is to document my story in the making, and you are welcomed to follow along. Thank you for your support. Scotty Von Holzen

S_V_H Purple Rain final image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen2 Comments

purpleRain_F

Purple Rain,  which I started from a suggestion on April 6th, I have now finished. The canvas is three feet by four feet in length. This artwork, following my current trend uses many add-on wooden features.  Besides using a lot of shades of purple and violet I search the internet to find as many images of Prince to get an understanding of his fashion look.  I then took as many of those colors,  and put them into this work. All of those circles, of various sizes, I custom-made and they, you guessed it, represent purple rain.

I have listened to a lot of Prince this last month. I have also felt a closeness to this work, and the thought of selling this artwork, will separate us, which I am having some doubts. I am seeing,  in the over one hundred music paintings that I have done, that certain artworks I should keep in my possession. Examples of those would be Thunder Road, Hallelujah, and I Won’t Dance.  Now, I am thinking about Purple Rain if it belongs with the few.  Hard decisions they all are, but selling some works is good for business, and even better than piling Purple Rain up with the rest of my unsold potential masterpieces.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present Purple Rain, my unsure of artistic creation to the memory of Prince.

 

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Purple Rain image 4

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

purpleRain_4

Purple Rain the artwork is taking on it own personality, and direction. It is enjoyable to try to capture some of the feel of Prince, but it is more fun to let go of the work to develop without the feeling of obligation to this superstar performer.  It is an artwork, and not so much a tribute painting, but more so my version of a unique cover of a great piece of pop music.

In this image you will see that I have placed the number 2 and 4, along with the letter U on this artwork. It is amazing how hard it is to find smaller size letters at the three craft stores I visited. They are a little large, so to tone down their size I blended them into the background. Truthfully, I did not think originally of adding any extra lettering, until I read that great blog tribute to Prince by Shawn S, and saw his use of the number 2 instead of the word two, and so on throughout his blog.  Of course,  that is his tribute to the titles of some great Prince songs such as I would Die 4 U,  The question of U, Take me with U, U got the Look, 2morrow, Nothing compares 2 U, Joint 2 Joint, 2 nigs united 4 west Compton,  and Love 2 the 9’s, for examples.

The next image, in a few days from now, will be the final image of this enjoyable painting.

Scott Von Holzen

 

 

S_V_H Purple Rain image3

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

purpleRain_3

An Artist’s music can live forever, but they don’t, and if  touched by them, maybe this tweet says it best:
Thinking about how we mourn artists we’ve never met. We don’t cry because we knew them, we cry because they helped us know ourselves.     — Juliette (@ElusiveJ)

Here is a beautiful tribute 2 Prince Rogers Nelson, by a co-worker and extreme fan,  Shawn S.

I was and not I am even more focused on doing my best to make Purple Rain the painting a fine example of contemporary musical art. For What it’s Worth.

With this image you are seeing the music flow in place. Working with wood, and then attaching it to the canvas is a learn as you go experiment.  For example,  after gluing the music on to this canvas,  I had to figure out how to carefully remove dried glued wood from fragile canvas.

In this work two of my I beams dropped out-of-place, and needed to be removed, and re-positioned. It was not until I applied heat from a hair dryer to these misguided sticks,  that the damage to the painting dropped to almost nothing.  I was lucky that the move, and the repairs worked, and the painting is back to original condition. All of these mistakes are well deserved, and paid in full by a self-taught artist that is pushing Musical painting to extremes.

I am aware that when I start each of these artworks, that when finished they all fall a little short, have minor flaws, or don’t quite meet my expectations, and yet that works for me.  With each of these painting I start out with high expectations, and then slowly the artwork takes on almost human characteristics. May be a little of me moves into them.  Anyway, when completed they become,  a lot more real then perfect. Much more alive than, lets say, any Digital artwork. It is that human touch,  that ends up in them, that makes each of these artworks a part of me, or what connects us.  Each is an example that tells this artist that the best is yet to come.

 

Scott Von Holzen