Leonardo Da Vinci, discussing the “sister relationship” between painting and music, once wrote of that “which delights the eye in one moment, just as music delights the ear.” The current exhibition at Falls Church Arts “Music to My Eyes” is a feast for eyes and ears, as area artists look at music through the sister art of painting. Various genres of music are given visual texture through silkscreen, photography, oil and acrylic paintings on canvas, and many more media.
Joan Slottow’s “Bach Counterpoint Concerto in Three Movements” was made in “celebration of Bach’s counterpoint style of music composition.” Artist Slottow was inspired by Wanda Landowska’s harpsichord recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” during her university studies. The artist depicts her artwork in three variations or panels. The colors of blue, yellow and brown (each color representing a melodic line) remain the same in the three panels but are varied in terms of shape. At the left panel, we see organic forms of lines with a wave-like pattern. Taking a closer look, if one tilts one’s head to the side, sixteenth notes can be seen. This represents the A variation which may sound more fluid. The middle image can be seen as the “bone structure” of the music. Each color or music line is meticulously articulated into clear shapes without clashing into each other. One can almost “hear” these shapes as staccato notes. In the image at right, the relationship between the colors intersect with one another in interesting, “counterpointing” ways.
Julia Glatfelter’s oil work “Practicing Brahms” is an impressive and virtuosic exhibit of photorealism in painting. The work portrays a room shrouded by veil-like curtains upon which the shadows of window frames are projected from just beyond. Outside these windows, we see a nearly “blown out” expanse of foliage, and the brightness and handling of light suggest that this painting is in fact made from a photographic reference. In the foreground just below, we espy the close to silhouetted outline of a man practicing his cello. We learn from the artist that this is her husband, practicing Brahms’ “Symphony No. 1” in their “breezy home on a summer day.” This work with its cool but realistic colors invokes a feeling of calm, something almost meditative, and brings the viewer into the world of this home and the skilled musician within it.
Imagine yourself in a jazz night club and the band is playing Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” or Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing,” and you feel the music vibrations as the trombones slide as a big band is swinging! Such is the feeling Bob Biedrzycki’s pen drawing “Trombones” exudes as it brings to life three musicians playing trombones in the brass section of a swing band. The artwork is in retro black-and-white, giving it period flare through the style of a “graphic art pen.”
Continuing in a jazz vein, the Cubist mixed media artwork “Jazz” by JoAnn Laboy presents rounded and straight geometrical shapes. Music staff lines can be seen with numbers, representing the unusual time signatures of jazz. As for the musical notes, they are drawn in circular and in triangular shapes. The artist uses warm, monochromatic colors, reminiscent of such Cubist works as Georges Braque’s “Violin and Palette,” with its similar musical theme.
In a unique work by Kelsey Joyce, the artist has chosen to paint upon a vinyl record. “Eye of The Tiger-Pink” sports the exotic face of a tiger with stripes, bluish-green eyes, and pinkish fur, all blending thematically with the exotic long-play record on which it is painted: “Far-away Places,” a late-1950’s-era “Stereo Orthophonic High Fidelity” album by exotica music maestro Lee Addeo, His Orchestra, and Chorus. While on the topic of vinyl records, the photograph “Any Fidelity Is Fine” by James Hengst shows the iconic storefront of CD Cellar in Falls Church, a shop where long-play records are sold to this day.
Following further on our harmonic line through the exhibit, we meet vintage jazz artists Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton, given visual presence in linoleum cut prints by Eric Stewart. Rock and roll is seen in steel in Chelsea Tinklenberg’s “Heavy Metal” and remembered in Rosemary Gallick’s “Jimi H Playing” — “Jimi H” being rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix. A further point of interest — and surprise — is multiple images of physicist Albert Einstein with violin in Jennifer Murphy’s “Einstein & His Violin,” created from puzzle pieces on canvas.
As suggested in our brief survey of “Music to My Eyes,” showing through February 25 at Falls Church Arts Gallery, as many visual stylistics as musical genres are on display. The viewer will be intrigued by how the two “sister arts” of painting and music interact and indeed throw light on each other.
