Last week I shared a couple of videos of the paintings of Edward Hopper set to music. I thought that I’d do the same this week for the work of another of my favorites, the great American Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton.
I’ve always loved the rhythm and movement of the elements in Benton’s paintings, in even his most remote landscapes. They seem to be filled with potential energy and the landscape becomes a living, breathing figurative element in his work. That is a trait that I try to emulate in my own work.
This video features his paintings set to the music of late American composer Walter Piston‘s Symphony #6, Movement #4 as performed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra as directed by Leonard Slatkin. It has that sound of youth, motion, and energy that is often associated with America in the late 19th/early 20th century. Plus it has Benton’s work.
Good stuff…
Another Sunday morning which means it’s time for a little music. I thought that for this week’s choice I would go with something a little further off the beaten track, going all the way up to Regina, Saskatchewan to grab this tune from the group 
I am really busy today. I am working on a bigger piece that I started late yesterday. There are just a lot of things percolating and I really want to get at it this morning. I’ve been at this long enough that I know this is a time of which I need to take advantage.
It’s a dark, damp day here that seems to sap the color out of the forest around the studio. All grays and browns and pale washed out greens.
I was thinking about what song to use for this week’s Sunday morning musical interlude and the song I chose brought to mind an old painting of mine, one that lives with me still. It from the early Exiles series from around 1995 and is called The Deacon’s New Tie.
You do not have to be good.
While I’m a much bigger fan of the work of his father and grandfather, Andrew and N.C. Wyeth respectively, I do like many paintings by Jamie Wyeth. I came across a video that shows him at work in his Monhegan Island studio on a painting titled Inferno which depicts gulls swarming around a boy as he stokes a trash fire that blazes in a burner made from an old fuel tank.
Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and… stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?
One of the great benefits in my job is that I occasionally get to hear from kids who like my work. For example, last month the Principle Gallery forwarded a lovely note from a young girl from Arlington, Virginia who declared herself a big fan of my work. She told me about how she likes to draw the trees in her backyard and how she hoped to be able to show me some of her art at some point.
Redtree Times 