Adagio

Art That Blows 2021

10" x 30"

stretched canvas

acrylic paint, acrylic ink, Sharpie, paint marker, clarinet screws, clarinet key rods, clarinet guides, spray paint, xylophone keys/screws, varnish

This painting was my submission for Art That Blows 2021.

This was a last minute piece done for Art That Blows over the weekend + 2 extra days. The week before, I had the sudden realization that I didn’t have to do the complex piece I’d planned (and didn’t have time for). I knew I had this canvas available, so I imagined it with a gradient and three bold Sharpie bars in the top right. Nothing else. That’s what I began with. Not even a inspiration word.

I thought it might be a good experimental acrylic pour piece, but otherwise I had no plan. I started it on a Saturday with no intent but to create something abstract, aesthetically pleasing and playful, while incorporating musical instrument pieces I had left over from the piece I did in 2020.

The orange blotches began as large organic paint smears. Toward the end they reminded me of, then became inspired by, red poppies.

Placement and elements were purely for aesthetics and by intuition. I have to thank Cataphant, one of my favorite artists, because techniques/placement principles I learned from her absolutely made this piece better than it would have been otherwise.

I chose the xylophone keys more for the lengths than the letters, but I liked A-D-A because Ada Lovelace.

When I completed this painting on a Tuesday, I started thinking about what to name it. I looked up words beginning with Ada…, and found Adagio.

adagio
Music: in a leisurely manner; slowly.

Leisurely movement in a piece of music, Italian for at ease. That was it.

Instead of an intellectual exercise, this painting began as an abstract experiment. It ended up revealing my love of surrealist geometry. I’d like to make more pieces like this; creating for nothing more than the love of creating.