This little commission artwork is finished. It took a lot longer than I thought. The issue, and I already know this, is no matter the size of the artwork the prep, the decision-making and the problem solving ends up consuming the same amount of time no matter the size of the artwork.

I am not comfortable working with the color green. That really is silly for I have a great range and variety of greens in jars to work with, and for this music green had to dominate the look.
So it does, but don’t expect the next artwork to carry on this look.

The words you see in this work, “God knows you,” come from the music’s lyric, “God only knows what I’d be without you.” What you see in these two sentences, are some shared words with different meanings.  My need, for any words that I use, is that together they do not refer directly to the music.  I always Google down three pages to confirm that there is no connection.  I actually like working with the words in this way.  These artworks go beyond the music that they start with, in direction and meaning. They also have greater depth than any abstract image of the music. As mention in many blog entries before, these artworks are a portrait of an individual piece of music. They represent a musical piece uniqueness and character.

I have to comment on two aspects of this artwork.  The blue you see above the canvases represent the sky. The lighter blue rectangles represent clouds.  The brighter greens and browns you see below the canvasses represent different layers of the earth.

Finally, I do not think I have ever used the word “God,” in any of my artworks. For this music it made sense. My lovely wife, Barb, pointed out that the word ‘knows’ was harder to read than the other two words.  Like all my earlier artworks I have always used one color for all the lettering.  This became a contrast issue after coloring in of the word ‘God,’ on a darker blue-green background,  and then using the same light blue for the word ‘knows’ that is on a lighter green background.  But, when I than tried a darker color for the word ‘knows’,  that made that word too prominent for its use.   My solution was to use the same light blue for all the words. This than allowed the important words “God and You’ stand out while the lighter looking word ‘knows’ to still connect the phrase.   A result, in doing the words this way, is that people will first see the capitalized words ‘God’ and ‘You, and then be presented  with the choice to read, or not, the softer looking in between word ‘knows.’  All this adds complexity, and challenge for the viewer to define their own meaning of this artwork and the music it is portraying.

Scott Von Holzen