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Musical Paintings

In the thirty years of writing artist statements I have had numerous chances to introduce new aspects in my visual artwork. So now I find myself in 2007 with the fourth showing at Gallery Turquoise at hand and the opportunity to write about an unforeseen development in my paintings. Up until this point the stimulation for my enamel paintings has been landscapes, usually rivers or bodies of water. This new development is using music as the inspiration. To put this occurrence in context, I would like to mention my long involvement with music. Highlights might include my youthful experiments with percussion in a San Francisco band, my terrible tabla playing and the obvious realization that I was not a gifted musician. At which point I shifted to recording music, and listening as a music connoisseur/critic. I am fortunate to spend many hours listening to music as I work. I have also found the wonders of satellite radio as I learn some of the history of jazz and rock from Sirius’s Jam On station. Exper-iencing music in this way and with such enthusiasm enabled my rebirth as a digital audio/video multimedia artist this decade. Cut to the Seattle group Flowmotion. Last year I first heard them here in Cooper Landing at the Sunrise Inn. That summer, I taped them at the Forest Fair and made a DVD. This year they returned and I taped them in Homer. As I became a true fan of their infectious upbeat highly layered and expertly performed sets, I couldn’t get their name out of my consciousness.Then it just happened. I will paint Flowmotion. And before I knew it, I had left 12 years of pouring mental landscapes and went totally to the flowing, poured, dripped, spooned, pooled, brushed and combed works you will see in my current show, Cosmic Rivers. My muses are Asian brush painting, the enamel work of DeKooning and Pollock, the idea of equivalence from Steiglitz and White, the modernist theme of painting music-think Kandinsky et al. It goes without saying that the works still evoke water, river currents and geology to name my favorites, and perhaps this will be a real turning point in my inexorable evolution as an artist. I feel that the possibilities are well worth developing. In my increasing multimedia involvement this will be another spoke of the complex audio visual world. I see a new Flowmotion DVD coming with these paintings as the B roll! Spelman Evans Downer July 2007

New Musical Paintings

Flowmotion 2007 # 6; Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Flowmotion 2007 # 3

Flowmotion 2007 # 2

Garaj Mahal 2007 # 2 with Fly

Contact information: 760-401-9018

Spelman Evans Downer

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