Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Winter Allegro. This painting consists of 10 connected canvases for a length, just under 18 feet(5.48m). The only objects left to add are the nine natural incidentals, which at this writing have all been drawn in, and are now being painted it. To my surprise I am using different shades of green, which I will explain in the final image blog post. Once done, the entire focus of this artwork will move from construction to finishing. This phase brings everything together, to improve the appearance and to add contrast and interest.
I was a kid the grew up in the beginning of space exploration. I remember having a cardboard mobile of the solar system hanging from my bedroom ceiling. My favorite planet, to this day, is Saturn. Maybe, because it starts with an S, like in Scott, or maybe it was because of the rings. I never thought of becoming an astronaut, and the telescope I wanted for Christmas, never arrived. My fascination of going out there, however, has never gone away. Of course, now I can afford to buy any telescope I wish, but I would not, because that moment has passed, and I am much to serious today, to feel the passion of first discovery, which I would have felt way back then. That was an importunity, now lost.
That brings me to this artwork and those shaded circles you see in the above images. First, in the image above on the right side, is an eighth note, which in music looks like this:
The part that comes of the stem is the flag, but I now like to think of that part as a sail. I see these notes as big helpers to push the music across the canvas, so in whatever form of a sail that works, I make the eighth notes a high point of interest. So, that brings me back to those shaded circles that are all around these eighth notes. To me they are bits of music. But unlike, the shaded circles that represent my vision of a musical notes, these other circles have actually nothing to do with the music. They are there because, I put them there, to float and flow across the canvas. They can represent pieces of music, or maybe small planets moving through the vastness of space. I like to think they are both.
aRT iN mUSIC 