Halloween Flounder

 

Happy Halloween!  This year, I have been working on a new series of artworks centered on flatfish.  I suppose flatfish have supplanted toruses as the primary focus of my art. People seem to like flounder better than donuts (the asymmetric fish have more personality…or at least they have faces), however the universe is not shaped like a flatfish (according to current models), so it raises the question of what the flounder means symbolically.  Flatfish are regarded as a delicious prey animal by humans, however they are excellent predators in their own right:  they are sort of the middle-class of the oceans.   Like the middle class, the pleurectiformes are experts at blending in, and they change their color and pattern to match their circumstances.  Today’s circumstances, however, are not merely muddy sand flats—the whole world is filled with wild eclectic ambiguity which is hard for anyone to follow (much less a bottom-dwelling fish). My full flounder series thus explore the larger human and natural ecosystems of the late Holocene and early Anthropocene world.  Each one lives in a little predatory microcosm where it is hunting and hunted.

The bizarre asymmetry of the flatfish also appeals to me.  Since my artwork seemingly concerns topology, this may be significant—although a classical knot theorist would blithely observe that a flatfish is homeomorphic with a torus (assuming one regards the digestive tract as a continuous tube).  At any rate it is currently Halloween and the flounder need to blend in with the monsters, goblins, witches, and mummies of the scary season! I made three black and white pen and ink flounders to use as Halloween coloring pages. These are supposed to print out at 8.5 inches x 11 inches, but who knows how wordpress will format them for your device?  Let me know if you want me to send you a JPEG.

The top flounder is a classical Halloween artwork of haunted houses bats, witches, pumpkins, and mummies. In the center, mortality and the devil grasp for the human soul. The mood of the second artwork  is more elusive and elegiac: dark fungi grow upon the sole as an underling hauls a dead gladiator away in the depths.  Serpent monsters fill up the sky and our lady of the flowers blesses a corpse.  The final pen and ink drawing is unfinished (so you can add your own monster) but it centers around a haunted jack-in-the-box and a ruined windmill. A bog monster, scarecrow and lady ghost haunt the doomed landscape.

I also threw in three little colored Halloween flounder at the bottom–as a teaser for my Instagram page.  You should check it out for your daily flounder (free of commentary and text, as is increasingly the way of our digital age).  I hope you enjoy these colorful treats and have a wonderful holiday!

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