Tag: ART

S_V_H Purple Rain image1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

purpleRain_1This is the artwork Purple Rain based on a single larger canvas instead of my recent trend of using small combinations of canvases.   After my first years of only using single canvases I began to combine them  to paint larger artworks. These larger size paintings peaked with the Vivaldi Four Season series where I joined single large canvasses together to produce works twelve feet, and more,  in length, by three feet in height.  The largest, and last of this series, Summer Presto, stretched 20 feet. After finishing the Vivaldi paintings I decided I needed a break from big.

The change to producing smaller artworks, came about out of exhaustion, and the practical consideration that smaller paintings are easier to hang for more buyers which could help to increase this art’s market.  They are also less expensive to make, cheaper to ship, and take a lot less time to complete.  Since March of last year the size of my artworks have ranged from around three feet to five feet in length. The results of these small works, so far, have been disappointing, with little interest generated all through 2015 to the present.

When I began to put together my ideas for Purple Rain I looked into my storeroom,  and all I saw where stacks of large unused canvases. This got me wondering how I was going to use them up. With that thought on my mind I decided to reject the idea of using a number of small canvases for this artwork.  My new direction for Purple Rain, that you see in this first image, is to go bigger and simpler, with the choice of only one two foot by four-foot canvas.

That brings me to this general feeling that my backgrounds have become too predictable. With a new thought in mind for Purple Rain,  I decided to mark the music on the canvas before applying the first layer of paint.  This then allowed me to place the stripping so that it moves along with the music. For the background colors besides shades of purple,  I checked out Prince’s fashion look in his music videos, and  images. You can see in this first image of Purple Rain where I used colors from Prince’s performance at the 2007 Super Bowl:

Awful official NFL video.

 

I am painting this music because of a request by a possible buyer,  and because I am a fan of Prince’s original Funky sound.   Purple Rain stands out as an outstanding pop rock song, and a choice that might appeal to many Prince fans, as it certainly does for me.

Here is an early, and a rare live version of Prince singing Purple Rain.

Scott Von Holzen

 

 

S_V_H Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix Final Image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

monCoeursouvre_FinalI have completed this my first Aria. Unusual,  but true, I cannot pronounce the title of this artwork in French.   Softly Awakes My Heart is this music’s English name, but I prefer the original title that comes from the French Opera,  Samson and Delilah. One of my goals for this  painting was to let the music move off the canvas. As you can see above that is what I did accomplish, after solving a number of technical issues. The wire I finally ended up using, annealed aluminum,  is actually used for training of Bonsai trees.  It is a lot easier,  and lighter than copper, with the advantage of being thicker, but easier to mold into place. Of course even this fairly large wire is not enough to create a strong visual effect. That is why I grab a bunch of scrap pieces of wood, and had some fun. If you go back to late 2012 and this  Vivaldi painting from the Four Seasons Series, Autumn Allegro,  you can see the origin of that idea using  paint only.

4SeasonsAutumnAllegroFinalSimilar  what you see in the Vivaldi artwork, and in this French Aria painting,  those assortment of shapes around the flow are there to create the look of pieces of the music being toss about.  When sounded a note’s tone often continues, although diminished, until drowned out by the next note.  In these two artworks I express those reduced  pitches in the form of panted pieces, and scraps of wood, with the side effect of adding interest,  movement, and in this artwork, adding mass around the wire.

This artwork has an odd shape, and construction, but I think the look turns out to be fine because the painting looks balance. Again, as I mentioned before, the background is good, but it is not the fresh look I am looking for. This is a beautiful Aria, and I believe this artwork stands out as a great visual representation that honors the music.

 

 

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix Image 2

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

monCoeursouvre_2

Mon Coeur s’ouvre à ta voix, is an Aria from the French grand opera Samson and Delilah first preformed in the year 1877.

Here is another version by Elina Garanca, which I shared with you in the first post of this music:

Here is a very beautiful version sung by Olga Borodina:

Again here is another version by Olga Borodina, that is from the Opera in which this music is sung as a duet.  I like this operatic interpretation because for the man’s part, sung by Josè Cura, for he does not yell out his love for Dalila, like the other examples I have watched.  Instead his voice is full and strong in his heartbreaking statement of his love of Dalila.

 

As you can see this is another experimental work in the how of pushing the music off the canvas. This is not easy to do, which can be seen so far in my fairly primitive efforts.  These new ideas in composition are changing the philosophy of these artworks.  I am seeing a speeding up of the changes to my original idea for this art form, which came from sheet music.   Although, I have always been  abandoning different musical rules since my first musical artwork, I do see that trend becoming even more extensive, and obvious today.  These later paintings better display this art form in its efforts to portray the feelings, and uniqueness of the music,  while distancing themselves from any image that mimics what you see on a sheet of paper,

This artwork is interesting.  Not only is it being uniquely linked together differently from any other painting I have done, but I have found myself totally disappointed in the way I am  portraying the background for this music. I struggled with the background,  without finding a solution to this issue,  in my last work.   I am now convinced that after this painting, I have only the choice to change my approach to my backgrounds.  They are becoming boring, and repetitious.  I will eventually come up with something  that will even surprise me.  I just hope eventually, means in the next few days.

Scott Von Holzen