Cherish, this painting is unusual in that the flow of the music is a straight line. The colors theme that I am uses comes from The Association Greatest hits album cover, and from there first album which included the song Cherish:
I watched a lot of Association videos, realized they had a lot of member changes, and confirmed that softer greens and blues was the way to go.Here is an early version of Cherish probably around 1967.
Scott Von Holzen
Cherish is this 2016’s Birthday Painting. This artwork consists of two canvases 15 inches by 60 inches in length. Cherish, was released by The Association in 1966, the same year I graduated from High School. My four high school years were divided, with my freshman and sophomore years in a very small Wisconsin town that we move to in 1962. I then spent my Junior and Senior years at a smaller Catholic High School, when we moved again, to a much bigger small Wisconsin town.
What that means is that all through my High School years I was kind of an outsider, not quit fitting into a normal teenager’s life. I do remember this song for its theme of unrequited love. Being a teenager in new towns, with only a few good friends, the emotions that came from listening to the music of The Association, and The Four Seasons was felt and lived.
Looking back, I think I should have enjoyed those times a lot more. I should have realized that I was fairly naïve about the art of dating, and it certainly showed, and that is was all about the learning, and all about asking girls out, and slowly figuring out step by step what the game of love was all about. But I did not, quite get that right, during those times.
” …I was so much older than, I younger than that now,” (The Byrds My Back Pages, 1964).
Scott
Here is the first image of a classic Pat Benatar song We Belong. This is prime Eighties music. This artwork consists of three canvas panels with a length of 52 inches by 16 inches in height. Looking at this first image of We Belong, the background is a surprisingly sparse in comparison with earlier works, with a solid black color dominating the artwork and not the stripping. The influence for this first image for We Belong comes from the Bach Aria artwork I did for Japan.
This is American Pie from 2010, that the Bach client picked for a template. It did not surprise me that they prefer my older style. What did surprise me was the required amount of adjustment made by everyone involved to make the older look work in 2016.
When we reached agreement on the background style and coloring, I than went even further back for another idea found in this Mozart work. It is in this early 2006 artwork where I used a wide stripping to resemble my take on the musical staff or stave:
Here is a musical staff used in sheet music:
All these adjustments resulted in a contemporary retro artwork the Bach Aria work, 2016,
Now, free from the need for approval, I took the Grand Bach painting ideas and simplified the entire background with the color black that works well with this artist.
This is the 1984 music video of We Belong.
I could not find a live early 80’s. This is the best of live versions from 2001:
Scott Von Holzen
aRT iN mUSIC