Quilted Brass (watercolor on clayboard 11 x 14) $350
If you have been watching this blog of late, you know I have become fascinated with painting bright shiny band instruments. I had been renting loaner instruments one or two at a time from a shop in Corvallis. But renting instruments, especially expensive instruments for just a month at a time, makes instruments shops who rent to sell nervous. So I was afraid I had come to the end of my supply of instruments to paint. But a couple weeks ago I got a brainwave. Weathers Music, here in Salem, has a recital room that sits empty most days. So I thought maybe I could talk them into letting me rent the instruments and the room at once. That way the expensive instruments need never leave the shop.
I gathered up two of my recent instrument paintings and went to ask. I had dressed nicely and rehearsed a little speech about how I would use the instruments for art, and how careful I would be with them. I never got more than three sentences into my little sales pitch. Keith Weathers simply said, “yes.” And the very next Friday I had the use of the Bach Room, from ten to five and an almost unlimited supply of instruments to photograph.
I brought quilts, fabric, crystal, flowers, and fruit. I also brought my studio lights. By eleven o’clock I had everything I’d brought in and Keith had gathered me a whole little band to play with. I had three saxophones, a clarinet, a piccolo, a brass trumpet, a silver trumpet, a violin, a french horn, a trombone, and a tuba.
I spent a magic afternoon setting up and photographing one still life after another. I spread cloth, arranged flowers, climbed on chairs, moved lighting, and toted instruments back and forth. At the end of the day I was exhausted but happy. I also had over five hundred photos on my camera chip.
Since then I’ve been too busy painting to post blogs, a sorry state of affairs for which I apologize. So here is the first of many more instrument paintings.
Mounted on a black wooden cradle.
Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.
