Music in the mountainsts, sketch 5, originally uploaded by ahtravis.
In the summer of 2008, I attended several musical events in my community. Of course I carried my sketchbook. I had imagined that I would be like Degas and focus on the dancers. However, I was just as often attracted to the concentration and small controlled movements of the various musicians.
Most of those “music” sketches are from events that combined music with dancing. That is because at one concert of classical guitar at the Old Style Baptist Church, in tiny Denver, NY, the audience was so quietly and intensely focused on the performer that the sound of my pen moving over the paper in the sketchbook was disturbing to the people sitting in my pew! I needed the activity of dancing to cover my noisy sketching.
Not only do I really enjoy sketching the moving figure, I find the process, which by necessity must happen very quickly, is intregal to my painting, as any sketch may eventually be included as part of a painting. Sketching quickly from life requires that the artist leave out all the unimportant clutter that distracts from the essential attraction.
I am using these and other “music” sketches in a series of paintings and monoprints on the theme, “Music in the mountains”.
bragg hollow studio 