Tone Poems is a mixed media painting and assemblage exhibition that borrows ideas from the musical concept of a tone poem in which descriptive, narrative elements are used to describe a place, or time, or a particular event. My spouse is a classical composer and for many years I watched (before the computer took over) as he scribbled his scores by hand on musical staff paper dotted with notes and squiggles in a written language I do not understand. I emulate this fundamental, compositional structure and use it as an underpinning for my paintings by inscribing the staff lines; five lines with four spaces between them at intervals throughout the picture plane. I am mindful of the staves suggesting musical language that appear and disappear as the other visual components of a painting develop.

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This series of paintings began near the end of 2019 when I was exploring ideas about the edges of water and its apparent condition as it is affected by interactions with land and people. Low Tide and Rain on the Pond were the first two paintings in this direction before the Covid-19 pandemic forced me to make my studio at home for quite a while. The “tone poems” became a personal record of time passing as I experimented with diverging notions of what a “landscape” format could be.  I began observing my garden and its two small ponds more closely. I have a sweeping view of the Narrows of Puget Sound and the Olympic mountains to the west.  Spring Squalls was inspired by watching the changeable spring weather from my windows.  While painting Tone Poem for a Pond, I experimented with water-mixable oil paint to build up more luminous layers of saturated color. My grandson was born in the summer, and I painted Lullaby for him. October Tone Poem describes moments with a pond surrounded in ridiculously vibrant fall glory and a bird whizzing past on a cello string.

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In a sense, each painting has its own “tempo” revealed by means of its color scheme, surface textures, and brush stroke energy, etc. Color shifts from cool to warm may be used to represent changes in pitch or like modulations from key to key. Other materials such as embroidery thread and strings from cellos or violins are attached to a surface to create a lyrical layer of spatial depth and expressive detail.

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In between paintings, I create public art pieces that involve the reclamation of musical instruments to become sculptural objects paired with the gestural limbs of tree branches. These quirky ensembles are usually staged behind public display windows with colorful stage lighting to provide a suggestion of movement and rhythm where sound isn’t actually present. The 9th Street Reconciliation Orchestra offers hope that the creative arts can bring different cultural traditions together in harmonic peace. It was inspired by the Chinese Reconciliation Park in Tacoma that commemorates the expulsion of the Chinese community from Tacoma in 1885.

 

Becky Frehse

September 2021