Monday, August 20, 2012

"Easy Chair Blues"

Here are some drawings that I submitted to a local gallery for an exhibit that focuses on jazz music. I should know sometime in September whether or not my work has been accepted into the exhibit. The show will be held in February and March of 2013.

For this series of art work, I had a very difficult time with coming up with an idea. I had already done some music based paintings earlier in the year, but was having difficulty with making fresh looking designs for a larger body of work. I also had the challenge with not being too cliché with my imagery, because we all have certain things that come to mind when we think of jazz music, right?

Finally, being a musician myself, I decided to create imagery from a musician's point of view. In fact, for my photo references, I held a camera over my hand and guitar and took pictures of me fretting chord progressions and scale phrasings. As I took the photos, I played an original piece called "Easy Chair Blues", which is where this series gets its title. I included an abstracted audience as a backdrop to show the awareness of their presence, but indicating the focus of the musician's task at hand, which is being in the moment of creating a musical experience. Therefore, this series is a compressed sequence of the song being played from beginning to end. I am hoping this is a unique take on the subject and that others will appreciate my efforts.

Created with pen and ink.

4 comments:

Sandra said...

These are exquisite!!! Good luck.

David R. Vallejo said...

Thanks, Sandra!

kristen said...

They communicate beautifully.

Clare said...

They are superb, David. Hope they decided to exhibit them.