The Meaning
I did “The Creation of Music” illustration at a time when I was going to many “open jams” around the Kansas City area and sat in on the drums to play with many great musicians who often showed up.
One day, I walked up to Frank Hicks (the owner of Knuckleheads Saloon), which has one of the best “open jams” in the Kansas City area and showed him this painting. He said he liked the piece a lot and told me I could display it there for a while. This piece hung in Knuckleheads Saloon along with “The Creation of the Blues“, “Flophouse Blues“, and “Wille Dixon” for a few months and many people got to see my musical art illustrations when they visited the gift shop there.
Being so heavily influenced by Peter Max’s Woodstock art and the art and music of the sixty’s era, I ended up creating pieces like this one.
The Trinity
Up above is the hand of God on fire with three flying eyes which represent a spiritual perception of the Trinity.
God Gave Music to Us
Out of His electrified hand comes musical notes and many different instruments given to many different people below the colorful red, yellow, and orange lights.
Gifts, Talents, Desires
I used these colors of light on the people to indicate that God generously gives people musical gifts, talents, and the desire to express them to the world.
People would ask me why the people were naked. I would usually smile and say, “That’s just how the people came out.” But now that I think back, Woodstock ’69 influenced it where people really were naked in the pouring rain.
The Process
It was interesting to me how my musical and spiritual influences would combine at times like these, and this was how they came out on canvas.
Many traditional artists would probably paint the background first and then do the characters and objects over it, but I always did the opposite. I’m a self-taught artist and just go with what I know first and that usually starts with sketching the spiritual innuendos, which in this case was the Hand of God and the eyes. Then I created the many different musical instruments below and added the music bar later.
Sound Clouds
The clouds were created in the style of a sound wavelength frequency to mimic the sound of the music which is created by God’s hand.
The people below were sketched next, done with a black outline, but left in the original color of the canvas, and then added the colored lights to the bodies after. The blue and black background was filled in last.