The Love Supreme Project
Most of you know that I like to paint from music. It's something I've had a limited degree of success with in the past but I've been trying to come up with a way of properly embracing the idea, and getting a bit more serious about producing a genuine piece of art based on a genuine piece of art in an entirely different medium.
My work in class of late has been representational - landscape to be specific - and the main message my tutor has been giving me is to always react to the source. Never be contrived, never be thoughtful - the marks should always be a response to a real stimulus. Which got me thinking: if one needs to always have the model present for a figure drawing, or the scene for a landscape painting whilst working, surely the same should apply to an abstract painting made in response to music. In short, every brush stroke is somehow representing what's being heard and experienced not any sort of informed or considered opinion of it.
There are obvious issues with this. Music is inherently about time passing, and there is no dimension of time in a painting, so you can't represent how something develops over time in the music. But there's another time dimension to music - how our appreciation and understanding of it grows over repeated listens, and how we reveal ever further information each time. What's more, what we get from a good piece of music is different each time depending on our mood at the time.
So we're at two things:
1) The painting must be a reaction to the musical piece at all times.
2) The painting must reflect the increase in appreciation which comes with repeated listens.
The idea then is this: The Love Supreme Project is an attempt to create an abstract piece based on John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. The record is approximately 34 minutes long. The painting will consist of many layers, each a 34 minute painting session reacting directly to the music as it plays. Once the album is over, I stop painting and leave it to dry before I decide to apply another 34 minutes hours, days or even weeks later; and another, and another. Unlike my previous abstract work, each layer will be informed not by the previous one but by another listen to the album - another layer of musical appreciation.
I'm also applying some other lessons I've learned from the representational work, which are around pallete, and as such this will be done with a limited colour selection to try and keep things coherent. Clearly the mixes will vary from session to session, but the base ingredients of ultramarine blue, benzi yellow and alarizin crimson will be constant, aided by whatever white and burnt/raw sienna I feel like mixing in later. Black is banned and burnt sienna will be kept to use as a tint, as I want any darkness to be a result of repetition of response, rather than a single strong one.
This may turn out to be a complete dog's breakfast but I'm giving it a go. First 34 minutes happened this afternoon and has resulted in a 1m square canvas (about 11 square feet) which is largely golden yellow with a sort of orangey 'disturbance' in the bottom half. Interestingly already a sense of rhythm is appearing, as well as a 'heart' to the piece where colour appears to be emanating from. None of this was intentional, concious or premeditated, which is pretty fascinating.
Here's to a journey into painting, and the work of an artist I'd admire profoundly : John Coltrane.
My work in class of late has been representational - landscape to be specific - and the main message my tutor has been giving me is to always react to the source. Never be contrived, never be thoughtful - the marks should always be a response to a real stimulus. Which got me thinking: if one needs to always have the model present for a figure drawing, or the scene for a landscape painting whilst working, surely the same should apply to an abstract painting made in response to music. In short, every brush stroke is somehow representing what's being heard and experienced not any sort of informed or considered opinion of it.
There are obvious issues with this. Music is inherently about time passing, and there is no dimension of time in a painting, so you can't represent how something develops over time in the music. But there's another time dimension to music - how our appreciation and understanding of it grows over repeated listens, and how we reveal ever further information each time. What's more, what we get from a good piece of music is different each time depending on our mood at the time.
So we're at two things:
1) The painting must be a reaction to the musical piece at all times.
2) The painting must reflect the increase in appreciation which comes with repeated listens.
The idea then is this: The Love Supreme Project is an attempt to create an abstract piece based on John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. The record is approximately 34 minutes long. The painting will consist of many layers, each a 34 minute painting session reacting directly to the music as it plays. Once the album is over, I stop painting and leave it to dry before I decide to apply another 34 minutes hours, days or even weeks later; and another, and another. Unlike my previous abstract work, each layer will be informed not by the previous one but by another listen to the album - another layer of musical appreciation.
I'm also applying some other lessons I've learned from the representational work, which are around pallete, and as such this will be done with a limited colour selection to try and keep things coherent. Clearly the mixes will vary from session to session, but the base ingredients of ultramarine blue, benzi yellow and alarizin crimson will be constant, aided by whatever white and burnt/raw sienna I feel like mixing in later. Black is banned and burnt sienna will be kept to use as a tint, as I want any darkness to be a result of repetition of response, rather than a single strong one.
This may turn out to be a complete dog's breakfast but I'm giving it a go. First 34 minutes happened this afternoon and has resulted in a 1m square canvas (about 11 square feet) which is largely golden yellow with a sort of orangey 'disturbance' in the bottom half. Interestingly already a sense of rhythm is appearing, as well as a 'heart' to the piece where colour appears to be emanating from. None of this was intentional, concious or premeditated, which is pretty fascinating.
Here's to a journey into painting, and the work of an artist I'd admire profoundly : John Coltrane.