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 Fine and Mellow Final Image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen1 Comment

+fine&Mellow_final

Fine and Mellow is finally finished. For its size this painting took forever to complete. Well  at less it felt that way.  I must admit things drag on way longer after I heard of the death of B. B King.  At that moment I could not stop spinning the Blues. Since Fine and Mellow is a Billie Holiday Blues song, with a great video, and B. B. King is the Blues, the Blues kept flowing through me. It is if it was hard for me to let go. I could not move on. Surely, during this time the death of my favorite Uncle, Walter, and our cat, Roxy, must have played a part. And yet there must come that moment, that we all understand, that Life is for the Living.  So this is it. After I post the blog entry, I am returning my music choice back to Quick Mix on Pandora, letting everything go including letting B. B. King fall back in place with the other 99 channels on Pandora.

Fine and Mellow, consists of three canvases about 20 inches by 50 inches in length. All during this painting, I have had  my concerns, after watching Billie Holiday sing this song with such great accompaniment, that I would have a hard time capturing that music. Of course, as always, I have to remind myself. I know that every painting starts out as if it is all about the music, but they all end up in some way a tribute to the music, but more so, an artwork that stands on its own merits. Sometimes I wonder  if the music is my excuse to paint another painting.

Looking at Fine and Mellow, it looks its best when the lights are lower which allows the background to stay dark. The brighter colors of the music are still there, but all those blues, in the background, take on more depth with the lights turned down. Surprisingly, What stands out with this work is the background. For a change I let the music flow float behind the background layers.  What caused this change in thinking was that the artwork looked boring compared to the black and white video. The stripping across the music woke this painting up.  At first I striped only the music flow, but that changed, and by letting the music blend more with a background, this painting found its own way to stand out from my other works.

This is a second final image, that I finished this morning. I added a lot more stripping across most of the major parts of the music, causing the background seep a lot more to the surface, and finally creating the look I wanted from the start.

fine&Mellow_finalb

The nice parts of this painting are my use of the color yellow and those shades of green. The words I consider to be well done, in how they blend into the background, an important part in helping to define the feelings of this painting. But the winning aspect of this artwork, and the biggest improvement is without doubt the strong emphasize given to the background stripping. All those different colors and shapes in the stripping greatly effected the mood of the entire artwork  with the added feature of filling in empty spaces with interest.

In the video you see this back-en-forth between Billie and the musicians. One of the goals of this artwork was to recreate that movement with the contrast of the background with the music. Like in the video, everything has to come together to succeed, and hopefully that is also happens in this artwork.

To end this blog entry and this special Time with Billie’s Fine and Mellow, how about spending a few last minutes with the Blues and B. B. King,  singing “When It All Comes Down (I’ll Still be Around)

 

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Fine and Mellow image3

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

fine&Mellow_4

Fine and Mellow has been slowly coming together. The words for this artwork are, ‘love so fine.’  Billie’s words are, “He’s so fine and mellow.”  I have filled, with a few extra pieces of music, that colorful bowl on the far right, that ties the music.  Also, I would have liked the music flow, the circles, to have been larger to fill more of the background space. I did enlarge the  music from my original plans, but that had it limits.  What I have done since this image above, is in the spaces between the music, I have added extra stripping. Hopefully this adds interest, and improves the feel of a dark, imaginative, smokey bluesy atmosphere, of this artwork.

The pace of this artwork has been so slow, because much of my free time, my artist time,  has lately been consumed by practice, not my drawing skills, but expanding my musical skills. My artistic focus is music. Music to listen to, music to be painted, and now music to be played, on the piano, the alto saxophone, the violin, and the blues guitar.

The violin  is new to me, this last spring. I eventually see it playing Classical music.  The alto saxophone, also new a month or so ago, it is my Jazz instrument.  The blues guitar, came out of nowhere when I heard of the death of B. B. King.  I did play the folk guitar in college, so I have some history with the guitar, but playing the Blues, where all American music begins, will be my newest experience with music. The Last instrument is the piano. I have played a little keyboard, on an off for years, starting at the age of 7 years with the accordion.  My thinking is the piano is to key to understanding music theory, and is the instrument that, for me, brings everything about music together. The piano plays it all from B. B. King to Vivaldi.

Fine and Mellow is near completion, for I really do not know what else I can do with this painting. I would like to do more with it, but I am not sure what.  That means, pretty much as is,  I will have a final image out in a couple of days.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Fine and Mellow image2

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

fine&Mellow_3This second image of Fine & Mellow shows the music, painted using brighter colors, to separate it from the background. Different from my original thinking, this painting is not going to be a visual of a black and white video.  Instead the colors in this artwork are my emotional reaction to the video: the contrast of light and dark, and what I am seeing and hearing in the back-en-forth between the sounds from the musicians, and Billie Holiday’s voice. It turns out that a darker lower contrast artwork was just a first reaction to watching the video for the first time.

My first big color move came from the words  “He wears high draped paints_ Stripes are really yellow,”  which shows in the stripping of the beams.  Actually knowing my art,  how could I have left out bright yellow out of this artwork. That logical move changed everything.

Scott Von Holzen