Album Cover, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
So, this blog is supposed to be about my art but I want to talk about someone else's art and explain how it is connected to my own.
I saw Jeff Magnum this weekend play at Town Hall in NYC. It was amazing. If you have never locked yourself in your room and listened to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea through and though, do it. The album is largely inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank. It is so beautiful, nostalgic, poetic, emotive and just intimately human. He opened abruptly with Two Headed Boy Pt. 2 and I couldn't help but tear up during the last few lines when he sings:
"Two headed boy, she is all you could need.
She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires.
And retire to sheets safe and clean.
But don't hate her when she gets up to leave."
So basically, during the next three weeks I am going to be listening to this on repeat which means my art will be affected by these songs. And it's not the first time. Not only is Naomi featured on my "artsy fartsy" mix, but I've been listening to this band since I was 15 and that year, when I was a sophomore in high school, I had an art class assignment. The assignment was to pick lyrics/poetry and incorporate them with a painting/drawing. I picked the final lyrics from "Holland, 1945":
"And here's where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes"
Jeff Magnum writes some really beautiful lyrics that similarly to Gainsbourg or Dylan could be, and is by many, considered to be great poetry. I know that artists such as Magnum and Joanna Newsom have not only influenced my paintings but have also influenced the poetry that I write.
All art is inspired by other people's artwork in someway. I love this chain of passing down visions, ideas, words, sentiments, impressions. Somewhere in my paintings a trace of Anne Frank will settle down and stay.
