Eric Dolphy

Description

MEDIUM: Oil on canvas
IMAGE SIZE: 8.75" x 10.75"
OVERALL SIZE (INCLUDING 'FRAME'): 10.1875" x 12.125" x 1.625"

Eric Dolphy was a multi-instrumentalist, playing, brilliantly, the alto saxophone, flute, b-flat clarinet and – most famously – the bass clarinet. He was the first musician in Jazz to bring the bass clarinet – with its range in excess of four octaves – into the proverbial spotlight as a thrilling and intense solo instrument. He utilized a volcanic playing style, working over the entire range of the instrument, to create some of the most exhilarating music in Jazz. The first time I heard his 1964 album “Out to Lunch,” I got lost in its textural, ‘avant garde’ brilliance.

This portrait is a heavily polarized interpretation of Dolphy. Working from a black-and-white source image, the color was created to add the same sort of carefully controlled intensity to the painting that I find in his playing.

In 1964 in Berlin, Germany, Dolphy slipped into a diabetic coma and died in a hospital bed. He was 36. He played with many Jazz greats, including extensive efforts with John Coltrane. His one album recorded with Charles Mingus – “Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus” – features a stratospherically insane solo on the track “All the Things You Could be by now if Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother.”

Added on Aug 20, 2009