This image of the Bach project shows it sprawling out on the studio floor. At the top is the 16×24 inch canvas with a pallet painting after Van Gogh. This canvas will be hung on the wall. The rest of the music that drops off that canvas will then zig-zag its way down to the floor, to my canvas print of Van Gogh’s Olive Grove 1889 from the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands.
On Amazon there are several commercial available framed images of this olive grove on Amazon. They all seemed dark to me. Looking on line I found a public download of a higher pixel image of this Van Gogh artwork. Both previous artworks, Wildfire and then Shenandoah, contain purchased commercial prints of Van Gogh art. Having access to a higher quality image of Van Gogh’s Olive Grove artwork allowed me to adjust the colors and contrast. Whether I am accurate at less my print feels more like what I expect I would see if I could see this artwork in person.
Amazon commercial print looking dull.
My canvas print of a public image of Van Gogh’s Olive Grove 1889 that appears bright and cheerful.
My thinking about this project started with what can I do differently from what I have been doing, while still using up my stocked canvases. That wonderment was reinforced by my friend Jeff Nelson who lately has been encouraging me to get out of my box. He does not realize I still have a lot of stretched canvases to use. Since he is a professionally trained artist, I have found it difficult to explain the goals of this art to him, even though I have tried. It is not his fault; it is just that my approach differs from his. I will explain those differences in a later post. And yet, I was a little bored with the current design of my latest artworks.
That lead me to a change. My original plan with this artwork was to start with a small frame canvas hung on the wall that would never accommodate all of Bach’s notes. The extra notes would then drop off the canvas, falling alongside the wall to a piling up of Bach’s notes on the floor with a Van Gogh print laying among them. Instead of a pile of Bach, I will now mount my the print on a small, stretched canvas. Then, like I have done many times before, I will deepen the frame to hold what will become the artwork’s right-side speaker box, placed upright on the floor, below the wall-hung canvas.
UPDATE: 4-28 4:45PM
a better plan worked out on the studio floor
Every idea for a new project starts out fuzzy and optimistic that all problems, all issues, and all hurdles will eventually be resolved. That reasoning works for I will, as I have always done, complete what I started. My biggest issue with zig-zagging the music down from the top canvas was how to support it or not, and would that work? The final decision became I needed to support my falling notes. That is where the angled aluminum comes in.
This is the first image of the new artwork project started on the 14th for the music box for JS Bach/A Marcello concerto, BWV 974 second moment, Adagio. What the artwork will be depicting begins near the beginning of this musical piece, which sounds almost like a modern piece of music.
BWV 974 Adagio. How Irina Lankova reacts to the music outwardly, is what I feel within.
Every one of these artworks is personal. Like Vincent Van Gogh and his sunflowers each of these songs, connect in a moment, sometimes in the lyrics, other times in the melody and often with no words They touch my emotions to spend up to a month or more turning feelings into sight and sound. This connection with this art’s music has been endless, all these last seventeen years, and will continue until there are no more songs to paint. No more feelings left to put to sight and song. No more way to continue painting what is an endless source of subject matter, music.
This is another update of an artwork that was moved from an aluminum frame to a stretched canvas frame. This music box is 2021’s Chopin Prelude.
Chopin Prelude completed in November of 2021 and pictured here updated in late October of 2022.
Pictured here is the original finished Chopin Prelude main frame brought up from storage. Both the speakers and the long ending notes are removable in storage.
The backside of the original the aluminum frame that the canvas and speakers where hung from.
This image of the updated Chopin, showing the stretched canvases that replaced the aluminum frame. The artwork’s canvas is secured at the top with a galvanized bar and held against the stretched canvases with magnets. The two 36 inch by 24 inch canvases are attached with 31/2″ 1/4″ bolts, offering a much stronger, and sturdier support for the artwork. No other updates were performed on this music box.
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Roger’s poem: My younger Brother Roger passed away a year ago this last August. In a tribute to him I wrote this story poem that I read at his celebration of life, this last June 4th. I believe this poem contains universal relatable moments that many who have lost one close may find some value. It is a story poem of choice, of moving ahead in life with instead of without. (This poem is in fifteen parts or sections and with each new blog post, there will be added one additional part. I am currently posting sections 1-13)
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Roger’s poem
The sun in winter
is all too short.
Who knew as you move through our lives,
that yours would follow the winter sun.
Winter arrests time
for thought and reflection
that February afternoon.
Dressed for warmth
we venture out,
Into the soft light,
surrounded by stillness,
not an oak leaf stirring.
The cold of that yesterday
is heard in the crackling crunch
of fresh fallen snow,
as I straddled previous steps
along a well-worn path,
deep into the woods.
Although I think
we are alone,
Zelda knows better,
her actions are telling.
Life and the deer are about.
Stopping with her tail up,
head sharply flipping,
to-and-fro sensing something_,
curious,
I also pause,
feeling a stirring in the air.
With her nose to the snow,
Zelda looks to turn off the known path,
to explore another trail,
far less traveled.
Her interest, I cannot foresee,
or know where it leads.
Before I can call her back
to the safe way forward,
Winter freezes my momentum,
with a stinging breeze
across my cheeks,
breaking the silence,
awakening concerns.
Had I dressed warm enough?
I feel and pat
my coat,
all was there.
Then it came to me,
that it was not the cold,
but the wind, returning to me
moments once set
quietly away.
I wondered why on a
cold Winter’s Day
on this made-up path,
at this crossroad
in these common woods,
this walk halted,
by an unforeseen breeze
sending a shiver
tumbling inside,
then out into the light.
Why over all my many memories,
did I find this one exposed
from beneath Winter’s blanket_,
a consciousness,
an awareness,
that once_,
was you?
But time was fleeting.
I had let pass
the diminishing forest light
and our late start.
Fearing the coming darkness
will hide this path,
I call Zelda back
to the safe way home.
For Home is where we want to be.
What choice have I,
but to be on our way.
We had to turn back,
for time does not.
I could only turn away.
Those moments have passed
this another Winter’s Day,
although the cold
is harder to ignore,
our routine beckons.
Although she cares less,
I dressed Zelda in a purple coat
and I in my heaviest hooded jacket,
thankful that each new walk
the sun grows nearer,
and longer,
and the return less concerning.
Along the way
Zelda repeats her many stops,
on our well-walked path.
And for a distance
all seems as it should,
until the quiet is interrupted
by a strong gust
pressing against my coat,
pausing our step.
I feel this air’s warmth,
as I look to see Zelda stopped ahead,
her ears pushed back
by the wind, standing at that
barely a crossroad
from yesterday.
Her brown nose twitching
in this comforting air.
Although surprised
to see her at this divide,
I have a smile of déjà vu,
brought-to-mind
by a long-ago line,
from a well-used book of poetry
now gathering dust,
from the poet Robert Frost__,
“Two roads diverged in a wood…”
Two roads,
diverged,
in a wood.
However,
that is all I recalled.
With a sigh and interest
I pursue
this other trail upwards,
to see it following
the rush of rolling clouds,
knowing soon these winter paths
will turn to mud,
preventing our return,
until the frozen has left.
Thus beginning the awakening,
ending Winter’s parsing of time,
with days merging all too quickly.
We will lose ourselves
to work to be done,
and unforeseen tasks,
demands and bills to pay,
that surely will come.
Though today
Winter still decides,
in the fast blanketing
approach of low clouds
bursting with snow
and ice pellets,
pirouetting down to us,
if in an effort
to hide our way,
on this favored path.
But wait!
Where is Zelda?
I see her brown eyes turned away
as she slow trots
along the untrampled path.
Concerned I call her back
when from behind
I am shoved stepping forward,
by a distant hum
that becomes a gusting woosh,
shaking the treetops,
that then fads slowly
to a murmuring sound,
all so astonishingly familiar,
awakening a time
thought placed away_,
when I held your hand,
my eyes focus on your whispered breath,
not knowing what would be your last_.
Until now.
For Winter’s calmness has returned.
And I am hearing only
my own breathing.
And although I know
that this air we can no longer share,
as if to awaken
Winter’s silence,
I inhale deeply in,
then out that which gives me life,
in a last hope,
it may find you,
and I may again
hear a whisper of you_,
still here.
But that time and faith
has passed by me,
leaving now only the understanding,
that I was meant to be
a part of your irreplaceable story,
a witness to your bravest
moment of unselfish courage,
that enveloped everyone
in the room not of your choice,
that became your
last unforeseen loving gift__,
the fearlessness of letting go__.
That it was alright__,
to let go.
I see that now,
what other choice have I,
other than to love you_,
and so I,
let your hand,
fall away,
from mine.
But that moment too has passed by me,
and I am here,
in this Winter woods,
at this crossroad,
without you
questioning our way Home.
For Home is where I want to be.
And Home is where you are no longer.
What choice have I
other than to let you go,
knowing each breath I take
you will still be with me
long after Winter has passed.
Section 1thru 13 of fifteen.....to be continued.
Scott Von Holzen
aRT iN mUSIC 