Sunday, March 17, 2024

Les Deux Frederics

Frederic Chopin, oil on canvas, 6"x6", 2024
I always wanted to glob on paint like the expressionists did more than a hundred years ago. This one was done in an immediate fashion, wet on wet. I've been enchanted recently by Northern European romanticism, sans the nationalism. In fact I believe (German) expressionism is an extension of romanticism. I don't think I've ever painted Chopin before.
Musica Elettronica Viva, pen and paint on paper, 14"x11", 2024
Drawn in my sketchbook from the image inside the LP The Sound Pool, recorded in 1969 but not released until 1998. I bought that one while in Florence last year. MEV was formed in Rome in 1966 by two Americans who had emigrated there: Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. The image features Patricia Coaquette, Ivan Coaquette, Franco Cataldi, Alvin Curran, Richard Teitelbaum, and Frederic Rzewski.
Two Eipo girls making a net, 20"x10", oil on canvas
Both paintings come from one single photograph illustrating four Eipo children making a net. On the 6-CD set Musik aus dem Bergland West-Neuguineas are several songs sung by children while making a net. The two in the top 100 were sung by Ginto and Kuto (who are two 11-year-old girls depicted in either the painting above, or below) and by Enento, Yakne, and Toronto. The Eipo live on the Indonesian side of Papua New Guinea.

Two Eipo girls making a net, 20"x10", oil on canvas

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Expansion and departure

!K-2. 40"x30", oil and acrylic on canvas, 2016/2024
I recycled two works from the Top 100 2016. The idea was that they would become part of this year's 100. The paintings departed from illustrating music by the !Kung Bushmen and became their own thing. Technically the Top 100 2023 should end around this time but I don't have nearly a hundred songs yet. We'll see what happens.
!K-1. 40"x30", oil and acrylic on canvas, 2016/2024
Number one in the list remained to be that song by Campa Indians from Peru. I have now completed 9 versions of the image, each starting with the same stencil. Here's number 8, that I had started last year.
Campa-8, mixed media on drywall, 12"x12", 2023/24
And number 9, just finished a few days ago.

Campa-9, mixed media on drywall, 13"x13", 2024

Sunday, January 28, 2024

The Mist

Rengma Naga, woman from Tesophenyu, 20x10
A couple of CDs that I ordered from Peter van Ham, from Germany are climbing up the ranks in Top 100 land. The CDs were recorded in the far Northeast of India and a few tracks in Myanmar as well. The CD Naga: Songs from the Mist, features recordings from between 1998 and 2002 of the Naga peoples, while Himalaya: Songs from the Heights, has recordings from Arunachal Pradesh from 2013. Both CDs were recorded by Peter van Ham, the latter on his own label. I was delighted to find a good many photographs, mostly by van Ham as well, in the booklet, even though they are super tiny. The photo illustrating Atekapuka, a welcome song from Tesophenyu in Nagaland, India, doesn't measure more than an inch by an inch-and-a-half, and has six or seven people on it, in black and white.
 

Saturday, January 13, 2024

Venus (birth)

Ihuahua, Cheour de femmes Yaulapiti, 20x10
Compared to some other well know renaissance masterworks, the Venus by Botticelli didn't quite live up to my expectations, when I finally saw it in Florence last year. My best memory of the Botticelli's Venus was a little statuette at a souvenir stand just outside the Uffifzi. I had to have it. While the painting doesn't show the back, obviously, a statuette has to, because it's 3-D.

One of my most listened to albums of the year is called: Brésil vol. 1 - Musique Indienne du Brésil (1968), the song Ihuahua is listed highest. The performers of Ihuahua are represented by a photograph on the back sleeve of the album sleeve, which was recorded by Simone Dreyfus in 1957. Really, anyone from this photo (by Dreyfus) would have made a good model for the "Venus" painting.
Simone Dreyfus, Yaulapiti – Ihuahua, photo


Thursday, December 28, 2023

20x10

Sokona, oil on canvas, 20"x10". 2023

Sacred flute music from New Guinea (cover image)

Thursday, December 21, 2023

OOO

 

Ashaninka (Campa) Indian, various materials on drywall, 17"x11"
I've been thinking about randomness recently, and surrealism. Fact #1 is that it's impossible to consciously act random. Why would you even want randomness? Well, randomness is organic, it seems to replicate the processes of nature, while conscious composition seems laborious in comparison. The unconscious is, per the surrealists, and Sigmund Freud, where the truth and the essence of being is situated. Fact #2 is that computers are better equipped to act in a random fashion. They are also better in rational thinking, compared to us subjective creatures. Do computers have consciousness, and thus an unconsciousness then? What I want to know is if the randomness of computers would act according to the same set of laws (as in fractal theories for example) as an organic entity would act. Aretribve  there hidden esoteric forces at play as a result of humans creating technology in their own image? These mystic attributes are surely unintended by the creators of technology (AI included.) The above image is a work still in progress. It was formed as a byproduct of a stencil I made to start off the Top 100 2023. I made about ten variations of this image, using the positive or negative stencil in the processes. 

Happy Holidays by the way. The newest painting is unrelated to that but I was thinking about the Trinity in painting this. Shown are a woman with two children who are depicted on the back cover of the album Indiens et Animaux Sauvages d'Amérique du SudThey are from the Wayapi tribe who live in the Amazon region in Brasil, illustrating the Top 100 track Yopanama.

Wayapi Indians, oil on canvas, 12"x12", 2023

Friday, December 8, 2023

Wassie or wasn't she?

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, pen on paper, 12"x9"
The year I first visited the birthplace of the renaissance yields much Italian music, including one from the most famous renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525-1594). He is not from Florence though, but from Rome, well Palestrina, to be precise. I can't remember in what context I heard Osculetur me osculo, but I do remember it made an impression on me.
Alice Stephens, pen on paper, 12"x9", 2023
Alice Stephens (1904-1984) was a Lithuanian-American singer and leader of a vocal folk ensemble under her own name.
Eténèsh Wassié, oil on canvas, 9"x7", 2023
Wassie (b. 1971) is the aunt of Selemnesh Zemene, who prominently featured in last year's Top 100, and, like Zemene, comes from Gondar in Ethiopia.
Giovanna Marini, oil on canvas, 9"x7", 2023




 

Saturday, December 2, 2023

Always learning, never getting better


Iannis Xenakis, oil on canvas, 9"x7", 2023
I've done a couple of smaller paintings the last couple of weeks, as life has been insanely busy. These paintings have been an opportunity to work on my technique. In every painting there are new inventions, new to me at least, from things often as simple as how to hold the brush to stumbling across new color balances. I've always felt that way: there has always been something I learned in every new painting. You'd think paintings then get better over time, yet this is not the case. Prehistory was as much art as modernity, every period has its ups and downs. I'm working on getting a website together (it'll be here soon) and I've looked at many older and really old works in the process. Since this is a Top 100 blog I'll share some of the history with you: Here's first Lenny Bruce, from the Top 100 1999. (The work was most likely created in 2000.)
Top 100 1999: Lenny Bruce, oil on found photo, 5.5"x8.5", 2000
The next one I don't know, don't remember much about. It must have been made around 2003 or 2004, as I was experimenting with techniques like those used in this work on paper. I do remember it belonging to a Top 100. I estimate the size being about 3 feet wide. The slide was simply labeled: Amazon.
Amazon group, acrylic and charcoal on paper, c. 2x3 feet, c. 2004
This painting, again I have no idea where it is, might have been the first Cat Power painting, perhaps also from 2004. I think this is 24x24 inches. I used a sponge for this one. Click on the right column on the name Cat Power and see 28 posts over the years that featured a painting of her.
Cat Power, oil on canvas, ± 24"x24", c. 2004
I do know where the next one is though, it's in a box that houses the Top 100 2002.I dragged it out recently because the name came up in conversation. Jad Fair seems to be well connected to the art world. The painting was an illustration for a Half Japanese song.
Jad Fair, 9"x5", acrylic on wood, c. 2003





Sunday, October 29, 2023

Eilish!

 

Billie Eilish
I painted Billie Eilish today. There is context as to why, but I leave it at mentioning that her song Happier Than Ever, performed on SNL right before her twentieth birthday in 2021, is actually pretty bloody awesome. I made some alterations to my Carla Bley painting from last week too.
Carla Bley


Sunday, October 22, 2023

IM: Carla Bley

Carla Bley, oil on canvas, 2023
Carla Bley died less than a week ago. Several websites I frequent, because of a similarity of musical preferences, dedicated space in her memory. I had never really listened to her music because, one day, maybe thirty years ago, I decided I didn't like it. I was so wrong, then. I might have been a bit of a misogynist, then too. I painted her right away, the first oil for the Top 100 2023. I have now rejected the plan to make a stencil print in an edition of five for all 100, yet I still like the stencil and I have not totally abandoned the concept. I did trace the Bley painting and cut a stencil. These are charming things and I will do something with these at some point.
Thus far the stencils have worked better integrated into larger wholes, than as individual prints. Below the stencil for Mary Sivurapik was used on a pillar outside my studio. The stencil print of Sivurapik, an Inuit throat singer, is below that one.
Mary Sivurapik, stencil print, 12 x 18 inches
The stencil I cut for Sun Ra also looks better in a large mural created in the classroom with a couple of students then it does as a print.
Sun Ra
"239" Sun Ra inserted in collaborative mural, stencils and spray paint on wall



 


Sunday, September 3, 2023

Top 100 2023

 

Ashaninka (Campa) Indian, print, a/p, 18x12 each
While the Top 100 2022 is up at the Top 100 Archive & Studio gallery, I'm experimenting with stencils and hope to come up with a concept for the Top 100 2023. I've been working with stencils a lot lately and I feel like creating the top 100 as an edition this year. The stencils could then also function to paint the full Top 100 as a mural, I don't know. It may be too ambitious to create 100 matrices (stencils) but I'll keep experimenting and thinking until I have a solid concept. A recording of a group of Campa women resides at #1 in the current top 100 for the time being. If I were to use this print, I probably dedicate to a recording made by Gerald Weiss in 1963 of a female Ashaninka solo voice, that is also in the list. I've painted the image before. I now learned that Ashaninka and Campa are the same people living in Peru in the Upper Amazon border region with Brazil.