Category: Classic Rock

Woodstock image 3 shows the music in place.   Different from the last work I did widened the music stems which allows me to attach my musical notes, incidentals, ties, and slurs to those stems.  This is consistent with my style before I left my studio for my current home office studio.  The wider stems have the benefit of more glue in contact with the canvas, allowing for a stronger bond.  I realized when moving my last unstretched artwork that any amount of twisting of the canvas can loosen pieces.  Maintaining the attaching of the music to unsupported canvas remains a concern.  These artworks present an uniqueness not seen in art.  Their freedom from a support, that has been a fundamental part of painting for over 500 years,  enhances that.

Next up, I will add all my embellishments for interest.  Finally, I have a decent rendition of the music Woodstock, and since I am not hurried to start another project, I would like to experiment with the instrumentation.  The complicated software I use for the arrangement requires me to switch my concentration away from art to the mechanics of music production.  My ability to process only one artwork at a time, also relates to my arrangements of the music.  That is why I try to complete the music before I build the artwork.  It all comes down to focus and success that moves me from one point to the next, one foot in front of the other, through one door and knocking on the next.

Scott Von Holzen

 

 

This second image shows the results of the scratch-off technique of the top layer.  I have mixed feelings.  I would have liked the words on the background layer to show better, to connect the viewer to the music.  To accomplish that, I realized I would need to remove too much of the top layer, losing much of the scraped look.   Also, because the words where casually applied their inconsistent look makes identifying them harder.  For comparison, here again is the original background of this artwork.  The words are there.  Whether anyone can find them and then read them only matters to me.   For now, they exist, and their colors show, and at this learning stage of this technique everything is subject to change with next artwork.

Next I will being cutting out 125 pieces of wood for my music stems.  I already cut out my poker chips note heads twice for this work.  The first size was 1 5/8 inches, which were too big.  I will save them for another project.  I returned to the drill press and cut another batch, this time sized at 1 1/2 inches.  They are all sanded and painted brown.  The stems will be stained and then painted.

Scott Von Holzen

This first image of Woodstock shows the painted background for the foundation of my scratch-off technique.   This first step differs in appearance from my last three artworks that also used this style method.   The purpose of the scratching off the top layer of paint is to expose parts of the backgrounds, which creates an unique and unpredictable (not boring) contrast with the music.  I could have chosen any abstract background style, but did not with my past three works.  They shared a style with Where to have all the Flowers Gone.  I changed this trend with Woodstock.  For this artwork, I had an option the others lacked,  lyrics.  Instead of painting a silly nothing image for the background, I painted the lyrics that are part of the music.

This idea of removing paint to expose more than another layer of paint originates with my Bach Menuet.   For that work I glued a copy of Bach’s handwritten music to the background of the canvas and then scraped off the final topcoat to expose the sheet music.   This same idea works with the lyrics from Woodstock.  When revealed the words add color and connection to the music and the artwork.

To paint so many words, I looked first to Jean Michel Basquiat’s handling of words (he used a lot of them in many of his artworks).  Here is an example of his style from Artnet.   He used oil sticks (oil paint in the form of a crayon) to write out his words.  I do not have any oil sticks, so as in the past I brushed in the lyrics with the bar set at legibility.

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I finished the J S Bach work, Prelude, in September.  What I had not completed was the audio and the mount for the artwork. Prelude is the first work that uses the new 20watt amplifier and speaker system, whose construction and configuration took time. It was up and running only after receiving some replacement parts delayed in shipping.  When they arrived, I mounted them on a board I attached to a custom-built aluminum frame that holds the speakers, amplifier and to which I could attach and remove the artwork. Here is my YouTube video of my arrangement of J S Bach Cello Suite No.1 The Prelude mounted on the frame.

Up next I will prep the background so I can apply the top coat of paint, which for this artwork will be Cerulean Blue Deep. Once the final coat dries the fun part (and mess) begins as I will then scrap of the Cerulean to review what is beneath.