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

20x10

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

Sacred flute music from New Guinea (cover image)

Sosa/Duval

Mercedes Sosa

 

Denise Duval

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 Sud.  They 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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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.

Breuker, Branca, and Young

Willem Breuker; Glenn Branca; La Monte Young

Breuker, Branca, and Young, numbers 13, 16, and 17 in the list of musicians for the year 2022. None are in the Top 100 (but all have been painted before.) Lots of negative space that begs for writing. I will sign it but I'll leave the writing to someone else.

Giovanna Daffini/Giovanna Marini

The second to last one for the top 100 2022 is a preview of 2023. Both Giovannas are in the Top 100 2023. I bought records of both performers while in Italy: Bella Ciao!

Marion Coutts/Gert-Jan Blom

Marion Coutts is a British sculptor, Gert-Jan Blom a Dutch musician and sound technician. Both played in the Dog Faced Hermans.


 

Wrapping up

Eva Rune/Jennie Tiderman Österberg

The Top 100 2022 paintings are nearly completed. The concept of the series of 100 paintings doesn't allow me to repeat individuals and everybody who needed to get painted had already been painted. For the last few paintings I am resorting to musicians who are listed in secondary lists such as the top 20 musicians, or the top 25 albums, or, like for the painting above, the 20 highest scoring musical traditions (field recordings.) Swedish kulning recordings were number 18 on that list, but not a single recording made it into the regular top 100. The 24 kulning points were neatly divided between two historical recordings (by Erin Lisslass and Karin Edvards-Johansson) and two contemporary ones (Eva Rune and Jennie Tiderman-Österberg.)

Badume's Band: Rudy Blas, Olivier Guénégo, Antonin Volson

Badume's Band is the band behind three separate songs in the list by Selamnesh Zéméné, my favorite concert of 2022. It is time to set a date for the exhibition of the 100 paintings.

 

Renaissance

Konstantin Simonovitch/Abbé Jean Revert

A friend asked me if my trip to Florence, Italy had an immediate impact on my painting practice. The influence will only be felt next year, when a number of tunes from records I bought in Florence will be listed in, and painted for, the Top 100 2023. I'm still working on the Top 100 2022, even though I had it nearly finished before I left for Florence a month ago. I had not been in Florence before, and of course, seeing these works that I've known for years from books for real did make an impact. No surprise here: portraiture is my favorite subject matter of the old masters. In portraiture, especially, the real makes a difference compared with a reproduction. The portrait of Savonarola by Fra Bartolomeo did not disappoint, portraits by Titian were to me a great revelation, but to say that I now want to paint like them, no. I have seen a hundred and fifty years of photography history, and I have seen Warhol, Orlan, and Lucian Freud. If any technical matter influenced me it's from an analysis of painting in the Renaissance in a book I've read before flying over; the use of complementary colors as a ground before applying the final color. I kind of knew about but never experimented with it, until the above painting relating to music by Iannis Xenakis. The painting clearly does not have a finished look but I decided it had to be this way. Konstantin Simonovitch and Abbé Jean Revert direct the orchestra and choir respectively on a recording of Polla ta Dhina, a composition by Iannis Xenakis. Simonovitch, further more, directs the Ensemble Instrumental De Musique Contemporaine on Akrata, another Top 100 entry from the same album as Polla ta Dhina. The Simonovitch/Revert painting was the first one I painted since returning from Florence, but I also finished one of the Kirk family illustrating yet another Rahsaan Roland Kirk tune in the list of 100 recordings compiled in 2022. Dothaan Kirk was Roland Kirk's wife, Rory, their son, and Alena a granddaughter.

Rory, Alena, and Dorthaan Kirk