Category: Modern

S_V_H More Than You Know Final image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen2 Comments

OK out there, here is the final image of  a great musical standard of the 20th century More Than You Know.  Listening to the Beau Brummels – They’ll Make You Cry.  I believe we use to play that song in the band, a long time ago.   On to Janet Jackson – Nasty,  which also feels good.  The personal preference is to be a nasty boy, but time and common sense has changed all of that. Billy Joel – A Matter Of Trust.

Some words about the words to this artwork, which are Luv you I do I do.  They are this artist interpretation  of the musical phrase, “Loving you the way that I do There’s nothing I can do about it.” The decision to paint a musical piece depends on these major things: How much does the music effect me.  For example can it be played over and over again, throughout the three or four weeks it will take to finish the work, and still sound fresh and meaningful?  Is there a musical phrase part of this music that has great interest and great opportunities to experiment with?  If there is a phrase that might work, and it contains words, can those words be twisted to  then become an expression of this artist.  And last, will the music fit on the available canvases.?  Actually, the first and biggest challenge is to go through the list of must paint music, and then convince all over again just why this music should be painted.  Some times it takes days, and no, no matter how practical it might seem, it is impossible to switch this artist mindset.  In other words, if  the current painting is More, there is no room for any other thoughts concerning the next work, which is now to be Heart.

More is an impressive effort that breaks new ground.  Above you are seeing on the top left the evolution of a musical beam.  On the whole right side you are seeing a a new take on a musical slur. Why should that make a difference?  Both of the examples above, show the slow but consistent effort to not paint boring things.  Certainly,  a curved line is a slur, and a rectangular box is a beam, but this art would have abandon a long time ago if that was all there is.  

Bruce Springsteen – Broke The Mold.  This artist understands all art evolves with repetition, but there is that moment that can separate the wall decoration painter from the born-to-lose artist.  This moment happens any number of times throughout an artwork.  Thanks, to the artwork, that demands to be different, and thanks to this artist is still lucky enough to feel what the work is saying, there is hope that the future will be full of of  swishes to swashes yet to come.

More Than You Know – Erroll Garner – Barbra Streisand – Dave Brubeck – Frank Sinatra – Judy Garland – Thelonious Monk – Dinah Washington – Billie Holiday – Ella Fitzgerald, and this artist’s very very favorite Sara Vaughan.

The third style point  used in this work, that has been mention, are the little abstractions that are the shafts used in five different locations.  At first they where thought of accomplishing something special, but soon those feelings faded away from that when they appeared to be lost in this work.  It was only adding the light green line along their edges did they seem then to pop back.

Platinum Weird – Will You Be Around.

It is the music that maintains this blog and the art.  It is hard to pull away from every night. It means that much.

Mozart – Piano Concerto No.22 III: Rondo.  From here next up is a 3 panel work  from the music of Don Henley entitled The Heart of the Matter.  The words chosen for this music are fitting and sum up the meaning of the music.  Those words are “forgiveness.”  You see if you can figure it out.

Something To Believe In – Poison.

And again Sarah Vaughan – More Than you know that is the finish to this blog post.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H More Than You Know image7

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

More Than You Know update while listening to Concerto Grosso in G Minor RV578  VIVALDI!   This is a quick update post to show a change in style in this art’s depiction of a musical slur.  Picture below is a standard musical slur image  (used without permission from Wikimedia):
Listening to The ‘In’ Crowd – Ramsey Lewis.      Now, in this painting, More Than You Know written in 1929 and since then sung by many of the greatest voices, the last two objects that are representing the flow of this music are

……   Jackson Browne – For A Dancer….

the example of this arts evolution.  Yes, much of the whole far right side of this canvas is being dominated by one very disjointed slur with a little Hans Hoffmann in the background to show off, and hold the slur shapes together.  You are not quit seeing a finished image yet, so look for a small tightening of the shapes and colors.  But there is no doubt, in this artist mind, that something good about the way this music and this art are ever changing and in every way coming closer together with each new work.  This is an interesting canvas, that has been has surprised.

Listening to Wild Wild West – Escape Club

Shawn Colvin – I’ll Be Back

Finishing this blog with another Jackson Browne – The Naked Ride Home.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H More Than You Know image5&6

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

More Than You Know 24inches by 6 feet.

More is moving along without any long pauses.  A point to be made, is that the stem over the left musical object comes directly from the beams from L’estro Armonico:

After finishing the Vivaldi work, the idea was to repeat the abstract look of the beams, when working on Baby Love; instead they looked sully and out of place for the music.  That lead to search for other ideas, ending up with the surprising choice of the Hans Hofmann style beams. Although, the beams in Baby Love  worked quite well they lacked movement. They looked pretty, and organized, but just do not add to the flow of the work. And then there is this other problem with abstracted beams. Music has organization and working with abstracted beams only worked well when they where limited to shapes resembling the fairly natural musical look of narrow rectangles.  Yes, I understand up to this point in all of the history of artist’s painting music, that the excepted style is abstraction; but this art is going a different way, and replicating sheet music has never been acceptable.

Listening to Threshold – Little For Me  & then Gina Sicilia  singing Rest Of My Days.

So, with More it because apparent some other method of painting the beams was needed and finding that Kandinsky artwork, made that happen. Now, the beams in More are not only eye catching, like in Baby Love, but they have the added look of increasing the flow of the canvas.

That moves this art away from the abstracted beams. Since the method of using abstraction in this art, has evolved from a number of other previous attempts, it was thought that this could be tried on the lone stems.  The thought was by creating  little vertical abstractions, this would add interest, and variety to this canvas.  The issue became apparent, stepping back and looking at the entire work:  that the two different shaft designs interrupted the flow. The  advantage of consistent stems is apparent in the simple straight forward look and design of those green shafts in L’Estro.

Listening to Dinah Washington – More Than You Know &  to Jaco Pastorius – Wiggle Waggle (never heard of him)

This next image, created after pausing this blog entry, is the solution to improve the flow of this work.  A thin bright green line along the side of the stems was all that was needed to reconnect this image. Listening to Tina Turner – Better Be Good To Me & James Brown – Sex Machine

Now, happy with the progress of this work, it is time to figure out what can be done with the circles. Since More Than You Know, is a fairly soft music, they will probably be painted with that thought in mind.  Except…..It never ends the way the thinking starts.

Listening to Queen – We Are The Champions and finishing this blog with It’s A Man’s Man’s World by Seal

Scott Von Holzen