Author: Scott Von Holzen

Hallelujah on a Friday evening.  The changes here are not that great, but this is going to be a family weekend, with an added home improvement in the studio.  There is a need for another bookshelf to hold all the Art and Music books that fill this artist life.  No iPad here,  even though the day job name could easily be described as an official Computer Geek. The lucky part is playing with computers all day, and getting paid for it.  Living the Dream Day & Night.  No matter, no download here, for there is just something special about holding, and feeling the weight of a great Art book.

What you are seeing new, are the mostly circular outlines of the five magnificent  8th notes.  Tonight, the coloring is the next project after publishing these comments, because once in the flow of the art it is hard to stop and do a blog entry.

Also, to share a small secret, the only word that appears on this ten foot canvas is Hallelujah.  But, and this important to this artist, there is in every work the concerted effort to separate the Music and its words from the Art and its use of  words.  In the Music, there are actually four hallelujahs and in the Art only one syllable is taken from each, to form the one word: simply an effective message that stands on its own

Scott Von Holzen  and www.scottvonholzen.com

Hallelujah a 36″ by 10 foot canvas.  Most of the art is done in the evenings, which mounts to a couple to three hours generally, sometimes less (life gets in the way of Art). The point is the last couple of days the progress has been slow.  This may be also because the expectations are high, which leads to a lot of starring, standing back, second guesses, and looking over past works to see what the differences are.  This work is leaning a lot on I Call Your Name.

What is needed is for it to step up and make its voice heard.  The ears are open.  They are also listening to the Leon Cohen live versions of Hallelujah which are the kick start to the nights work.

The music and the art will come together, that is how it works, that is what it takes, that is how it gets done.

Scott Von Holzen

Hallelujah and the squiggly Slur.  It took one whole evening to draw and paint the Tie and the Slur in this music.  Then it took an afternoon to paint the three note beam above.  Neither is finished.   A musical Tie and a Slur are just nice curved lines that connect two similar notes or a group of notes, as a slur. Some times, such in Winter a strong curve line works, but for this music the slur is used to shake up the even flow of this work.   Slurs and Ties have been painted in a number of different styles over the years.  The question with this effort was the chosen color and not so much the originality of the slur.

Ties and Slurs offer a chance to let loose on the canvas in the hope of shaking up the obvious flow of the notation.  The problem was how to draw the emotions of a Tie or Slur to the in a original style that catches the viewer.

In Hallelujah the slur does not have that wormy look reminiscent of the Christmas painting.  Also, the chaos is better connected here, then in Imagine,  less predictable then in  Cry Me A River, close to the fine effort in Eyes on a Prize,  and probably an evolution of the slur from Chopin’s Valse, with more spontaneity and less strictness.

Still, there is a wish to be able to do more.  Still, there is wonder if two dimensional art has any chance in this assemblage art world.

Scott Von Holzen