Tag: The Byrds

S_V_H My Back Pages Final Image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen2 Comments
Two Canvas with Aluminum and wood, 26 1/4 x 17 1/4

My Back Pages is one of the smallest of my artworks, under thirty inches in length, and has the least amount of music. Since there is so little music present there is also little in visual interest.  That is the reason I decided to go further with my use of words in this artwork. I took what I learned from Lovesong, and in a free poetic style I brought words together from different parts of the music.  I deliberately chose words that have meanings far beyond their appearance in the song, and then I placed them randomly.  It is the words that connect this artwork.  I think this trend will continue because it worked so well in My Back Pages and Lovesong.

I cannot but wonder what would have happened with my art if I had not stop painting in the early 1980’s?  Back than I had no connections to the local artist community, and few opportunities to show. Basically, when I started I had a dream,  a few art books, and a spare bedroom to paint in.  From 1975 to the early 1980s I painted a number of portraits mostly from photographs of family and friends. I than ran out of subject matter, and along with the demands of earning a living my artist ambitions faded. In reality an artist prodigy I was never. In truth the drive and the limits of painting portraits,  and the lack of interest in any other alternate artistic genre,  brought it all to an end.   That was back than: “Ah, but I was so much older than, I’m younger than that now.”  Twenty-five years later I found a vision and a genre, music, that offers endless possibilities. The internet gives me the start at building connections, and I now have the time and the money to pursue  it all.  The biggest difference from than to now is that I  finally have the knowledge, the drive, the purpose, the goal, and the ambition to see all this through. As I have said before I am in it for the long run, and I hope you as the reader find this pursuit interesting enough to check in once in a while.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H My Back Pages image1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This is the first image for a small artwork, My Back Pages.   Bob Dylan wrote the music for this artwork,  but I remember the song from listening to the band The Byrds.  The Byrds recorded a number of Dylan’s music, including Turn, Turn, Turn, and another favorite of mine, Mr Tambourine Man. I have always wanted to paint this music, mainly because of a line from the music:”Ah, but I was so much older than, I’m younger than that now.”   For me, they where words in a song that I liked and I guessed defined only as a 60’s feeling.  Today, I can probably best summarized their appeal by a quote by George Bernard Shaw “youth is wasted on the young.”

What convinced me to finally attempt this artwork was  this My Back Pages video, from 1992.  The video includes these artists: Bob Dylan, George Harrison (The Beatles), Neil Young, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Roger McGuinn (The Byrds),  and the back up band, Booker T & MGs:

I am using colors that give this painting that look of the 1960’s.  That means, I will be using browns, muted greens and blues.

One reason I picked this music  was that I could do a smaller work ( this one is under 27 inches in length), in a shorter amount of time. That did not work. It never works.  The size of an artwork only affects a predictable amount of time. The real unknown, and largest consumer of my time, is the problem solving in the constructing of these artworks.  That leaves me with my this reasoning behind doing smaller works, and that is that they are easier to store, and sell. Big artworks create a wonderful first impression, but since I am in the beginnings of adding Art Fairs to help promote this artwork, smaller paintings make sense in every way.  So there it is. Until I can find a Gallery to represent my work, I am becoming the weekend Gallery in a white tent. At least, I am not selling them out of the trunk of my car.

Scott Von Holzen