Category: christmas

S_V_H Have yourself a merry little Christmas image1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

haveMerryChristmas_1Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is the  theme for this years Christmas painting. When completed I will then put together a Christmas card to be sent to those who purchased a painting from me.  Inside that card will be a small canvas print of Have yourself a merry little Christmas, signed and numbered.

This music was first introduce to the public by the beautiful 21-year-old Judy Garland in the 1944 movie Meet Me in St. Louis.

Here is an equally beautiful and talented Christina Aguilera along with Brian McKnight:

This first image show the finish of the basic background.  What I mean by basic is that this step is about putting down paint across the artwork, with the goal of covering up much of the white canvas.  Next up,  I will be taking what I learned in the last artwork, and  break up the horizontal striping using curved and straight shaded lines  This will add some interest to the background, and may even enhance the sense of movement of the music across the artwork.

I have said this a in a number of my blog entries,  that a major goal of each of these paintings is to try to emulate the music the art is portraying. That is pretty hard to do with out sound. Previous efforts  by artists to depict music mostly as abstractions, I believe, have missed this point:  an artwork may be depicting a Mozart Sonata,  or it could as likely be a scenic image of a Kansas dust storm just before a thunderstorm.  For me musical art is not an abstraction, but something that is real, and that visually depicts each piece of music in a unique way that connects the art to the music.  All of these artworks work to represent that singular look, and  feel of that one piece of music.  The success of each of these artworks brings me closer to my goal of picturing music’s spontaneity, emotion, and uniqueness, in a static, and silent art form.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H A Great Big Sled Christmas 2014 final image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen2 Comments

aGreatBigSledFinal

A Great Big Sled Final Image. Here is another version of this wonderful Christmas song with a modern edge to it. When you hear those bells, you are listening to this artwork.

This finished  artwork uses six canvas panels with a finished length of sixty inches. Any picture of this artwork will never compare with seeing it in person. No image I can produce captures the look of the gold and silver paint that dominates this work. This resulted in a long struggle to produce a decent canvas image for this years Christmas cards.  Finally, under the press of mailing dates, and the conclusion that I could not produce a match of the work, I did my best to print something. This years Christmas card printing is largest ever with thirty copies.

Looking at the overall finished artwork I like the look of the candy cane stems. They were a lot of work,  not tedious, but time-consuming.  I especially like the look of those long blue objects that are my version of musical Rests. I painted over a dozen Rests, each different from the last, in the last Vivaldi. You can see that look being carried over in this artwork. What I am seeing in my Rests, is a good solution in design that has quickly become a mature style. The Rests will certainly evolve over time, but not out of need or necessity.

My symbols for the bell sounds, surrounded by extra circles, are nothing special, but they work, filling space while adding interest, and the opportunity to add extra canvases to make the look of this artwork, unique. My musical vine looking Slurs, you see all across the top of the canvases, and repeated in a red color in the music, give a Christmas look to the work, and fill space while pushing the music across the canvas. My red and green rectangles I like for their sharp edges counter the rounded forms of the slurs and the other rounded objects in the music. My choice of words where the best option, that balance well, and flow nicely across the painting. Still, If I would have had another choice I would have left out the word ‘me.’  I like words to connect personally to the viewer,  leaving me out of the picture, but this did not work.

As this art has taught me over the years, I have come to respect the limitations when producing each painting.  Each of these finished artworks are a display of an abstract idea that is music, and the price of admission that allows me to paint another. I always hope that my next artwork will somehow solve the disappointments with the last painting, but I know that Music is a vastly diverse language, so that challenge is great.  I have to constantly look at my art and question how I paint, and if I can find another, better way, to visualize sound that a viewer can relate to.  This makes everything complicated because for this art to evolve artistically, I have to keep an open mind, with all of its options, no matter the direction this may turn me.  It is that search to find new ways to apply the colors of acrylic paint to pieces of canvas, that will forever remain the goal. This years Christmas painting breaks no new ground, solves no problems, and answers nothing. That is what I expect from the last artwork of the year. Instead, in all of its non answer glory,  It is a summary of this art’s 2014 style that leaves open another opportunity for improvement. On to 2015 where the best artwork is yet to be built.

Scott Von Holzen

 

 

 

 

S_V_H A Great Big Sled Christmas 2014 image2

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

bigSled_2

This is a late 2nd image of A Great Big Sled this years Christmas painting.  Looking at the image you can see that most of the major items are in place.  For those parts that I need to paint in I have some basic ideas of what I am going to do.  With my version of 8th notes I am looking to fill space and add interest. By using a long curve shape this will animate the music across the canvas, which is similar to many of my artworks, where I create sails out of my notes.  When I create a musical artwork a static look is not excusable.  Maybe that is why a lot of art based on musical themes are abstractions.

My words ‘me in the sled,’ say something different from the music, which is what I always try to do in my word choices. My words intentionally go in a different direction from the music. The viewer hopefully seems them as a curiosity.  They are a part of an artwork, that starts out as a tribute to a song,  and ends as something more out of something else, that maybe on its own appears to be rather mundane or boring.

It is interesting that the  music that I portray, ends up being little influenced by the real music I am portraying.  It is like I am using music as an excuse to paint an artwork.

My love of music makes my love of art real, and not a reproduction in a book.

Scott Von Holzen