Abstract Painting & Electronic Music 60

In celebration of my 1,000th painting (they’re small) and a suggestion by @MalleableSound, here is a much fuller description than usual:

The soundtrack “AP&EM 60” was composed and recorded with Logic Studio 10. There are fifteen tracks of sampled sounds with signal processing and fourteen synthesizers, some of which use samples and granular synthesis. The timing was designed to align with the images as they go from one to the next.


Paintings


My approach to painting is purely abstract.
In other words
If something looks like a tree it wasn’t meant to look like a tree. You can find all kinds of things like boots, hats, faces, animals, landscapes that were not put there deliberately. It’s just a happy accident that the paint went on that way. The paintings are novel in the sense that they are not supposed to look like anything but sometimes do anyway. They are not completely random however, since ego and personal taste affect the process. If something comes across looking like Rothko for instance it is not an imitation or homage but rather the use of a technique he contributed to painting. I could never paint like Rothko nor would I want to, but as with music, I like to use different styles for different purposes.

Music

The Genre for these videos has been mainly Electronic. A few earlier ones have percussion music and virtual progressive instrumental Metal music but Electronic suits the paintings best, I think. Electronic Music and Abstract Painting both came into being at around the same time so they go together naturally and compliment each other.

The Electronic genre covers a broad range of music from early experimenters like Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, Edgard Varese to Max Matthews who developed Computer Music, and Pop artists like Kraftwerk, The Residents and later Apex Twin and many many more. My approach is to draw from all of these sources or as many as I can. I aim for variety and novelty. I use sampled sounds, synthesized sound, and a lot of signal processing.



Curtis Abraham 1958-2023

Curtis was my neighbor, friend and mentor. He was the force that propelled me into painting. One day he said to me, “I got a challenge for you” and handed me a bag of brushes, paints, and a piece of cardboard, “Do a painting” he said. I did and never stopped. As I progressed the only instructions he gave me were to never watch instructional videos and “think layers”. Curtis’ style was Abstract Symbolism and it reflected his cultural experience. There is love in his paintings as well as tragedy and some things that scare me. Since he is no longer around I can only express my deep gratitude to his Sons and Daughter who are taking care of his works and to the Universe at Large. I put up a tribute to him called Abstract Painting & Chopin.