S_V_H Naive Melody Final / Ev’ry Time we say goodbye

Naive Melody Final image.  This image turned out to be a lot of fun to create with the music being the first surprise and the blue and white stripped ‘tie’ the final. This painting breaks ground and continues on from the July Birthday work.  It will be in the studio only a couple weeks before it begins its new life, so it will be studied and compared to, and admired hopefully absorbing and dispersing its effect on this art over the next few canvases.

First image of Ev’ry time we say goodbye.  It took two days to find the right music to start this next work.  The music done by Simply Red was the first encounter with this song many years back.  This is a Cole Porter tune and the musical phrase that is going to be used comes from the ‘major to minor’ line.  All that was thought of first was that this was a slow, torch song, that should use a lot of blues.  Frustrating the choice was that there could not be found a ‘definitive’ musical version of this music.  The searching  got strange when up popped a cover by Red Stewart, that almost killed this piece.   No mater, no version was done by Billie Holiday, and there was no access to the  Sara Vaughn version.  Even listening to the Simply Red version, seemed inadequate.  The best versions that where available are by Ella and especially Diana Krall, which comes close.  This is great music and this music deserves that one special voice that captures it completely.

Then the photo of the 1932 Picasso painting Nude, green leaves and bust, that sold for over $106 million, caught the attention, because of its value and its use of blues and greens, with a mix of supporting colors.  At first this was thought of as a ‘color guide’ for Ev’ry but for some unknown reason that thought changed to the second version of the Van Gogh portrait of Dr. Gatchet that has disappeared.  Those blues, the paint technique of cross brushing, and the use of the red to contrast the blue changed the plan.

So, this second image does not look anything like Dr. Gatchet.  That is correct, the more blue that was put down the more sense of nothing going on here surfaced.  The silver push this work quickly into the unknown, guaranteeing this painting will  never be a tribute to either Picasso and Van Gogh, but to the music.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Naive Melody image12

Naive Melody close up of this arts version of a musical tie, which this is an example: In music a tie is used to add the value of the second note to the first.  In this art a tie is something that is fun and adds character and depth, and interest, and surprise, and curiosity, and wonderment.

This work is near completion.  Now, begins the last hard part: letting go, and excepting that it is time to separate the artist from the artist work. This can take days.  The artwork grows from a blank canvas to a complete image that is harmonic and unique. Like a child leaving home to live their own life, these works are expected to do just that, and when finished they demand that they do.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Naive Melody image11

This is the left size of Naive Melody. An interesting part of this canvas is all those circles next to the first note.   What are they?   A Music Theory education or even the ability to read sheet music may help,  but  neither is necessary to know that  those circles are simply the new look of  this art’s abstraction, of what could be called a typical  note  (borrowed image) :
In Cry Me a River, an with a number of previous works, these fun notes where more in the shape of fans.  Last night a feeling of frustration over not wanting to do the fan thing again with the eighth note was the wall that was confronted, standing and starring, tired and  full of blank thoughts, bored and disappointed.  Then,  just like that, circles came out of nowhere.  No clue,  just there, and all the efforts spent to find something new these last many months,  faded to nothing: reaching nothing created an opening to something. The thought now is that there is plenty of room for expression to grow with these shapes.  We shall see, what the next painting brings, for sure what starts and what ends is always the surprise.

Scott Von Holzen