I recently had a request to paint Miles Davis. It inspired a new series of paintings featuring sketches of musicians with their instruments in full color. Here are my latest works:
As I was creating these pieces, I focused on reversing the roles of perception in observing music. A professional musician is considered established with years of training and endless experience in performng a piece of music. We see this person as the essence of the music, well practiced in their craft. The instrument is really an extension of the artist. For example, Coltrane is a jazz artist who uses his saxophone to roll rhythms together, to paint a picture with notes. But in my reversed portrayal, the musician is the one being improvised. He is the sketch that is just emerging. It’s the instrument that brings life to the work and color to the scene.
Musical improvisation is strikingly similar that of painting. In jazz improvisation, new melodies are created over a repeating cycle of chord changes of a tune. It is like writing a sonnet- there is a specific structure to follow (in this case chord harmonies), but within that there are endless possibilites for creativity and self-expression.
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Within the structure of balancing colors and composition, the possibilities are also unlimited and exciting. A painter can challenge our acceptance of how things look. A carefully placed lack of color plays with the viewers ideas of boundaries and biases. Bold beauty of the world of color can be contrasted with the blankness of spaces.
And so, in this series, the musicians are the blank slates and the instruments lead the way on the canvas. I’m continuing the series and am currently working on a drummer. Stay tuned.
Thanks,
Marla Bender
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The first musicians of the series were John Coltrane and Miles Davis
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