I have finished Improvisation Chasing Cars. One thing that surprised me was how fast this thirty-six inch painting came to a finished look. Once I had painted all the major components it took three or so hours of focused concentration to do the clean up. And then that was it. Easy to photograph, and easy to wire up. Tomorrow out of the door, and then in a few days off to the client that commission this musical piece.
My impressions. My, this is a small work. I can easily carry it around without concern of banging the edges. That is one advantage with the other being the physical painting of this work progresses quite fast. Let me counter that, for I have checked the date on my work sheet, and that surprisingly read August 23rd. Wow, that is over a month, spent on this small work. Of course, some of that time I used on a sister work that I was painting concurrently, but still? To my surprise I have learned that I put a lot of heart into all my efforts, no matter the size. I guess I was trying to see if I could paint small canvases. Well, I guess I can paint small works. The problem is they take about as much time as larger works, and that is the issue for larger works pay more. Although I do not paint for the money, the money pays for the paint. Interesting dilemma. For commission works the demand is certainly for small to smaller size works, a lot less than four feet. I can say this though, I have reached my limit on the size of the music at thirty-six inches. No smaller, no way.
In the future, I will have to charge more for the one mentioned reason, it takes about the same amount of time to complete a small work or a six-foot artwork. I suppose if this art involves to be spontaneous, like Bebop, or Cosmos forbid, in the style of past music artists, that could speed up things. But I do not expect that. I guess my original approach to doing small works, was to paint them using similar methods as I do with Birthday paintings. But these small works are not Birthday paintings. They are regular artworks. The more I learn the language of music, the more complicated and interesting it has become. I like to portray as much interest as possible in each musical work, no matter the size, and no matter the time needed.
Time now to give my feedback on this work. It is cute. of course, and fits most walls. I would have liked to have used some shades of brown on the thirty-six in canvas. I decided not to going along with the work, which told me it was fine with the blues. I work the blue background, considerably, in the clean-up process, which helped. The most interesting new technique, used on this work, is the deep depth of stripping on the small panel. I have in the past been very horizontal in my stripping, and that little nine by twelve-inch panel now challenges that idea. I can see this style being pushed forward on larger works. I love the words, and I uniquely painted them using iridescent paints, which solve an issue on how to softly pop them.
Scott Von Holzen
aRT iN mUSIC 