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Happy Solstice! I wanted to finish off the ocean theme and celebrate the longest day of the year by coloring one of my large flounder drawings (which I originally designed to be in a huge strange flatfish coloring book). Unfortunately, coloring the image took sooo long that the longest day of the year is now over! (and I am still not happy with the coloring–which turns out to be just as hard as I recall from childhood)
Anyway, here is a sky flounder with a Dutch still life on his/her body swimming over the flat sea by the low countries. Little Flemish details dot the composition (like the clay pipe at the bottom, the bagpiper by the beach, and Audrey Hepburn in a 17th century dress) however the endearing minutiae can not forever distract the viewer from larger themes of sacrifice and the ineluctable passage of time (both of which are fine ideas to contemplate on this druidic holiday).
As always, we will return to these ideas, but for now, happy summer!
Wow! It seems like just a few days ago I was talking about Ferrebeekeeper’s 10th anniversary, but I guess that was actually back at the beginning of April… back in the world before the quarantine. Anyway, in that long-ago post, I mentioned that Ferrebeekeeper’s 2000th blog entry is coming up (if you can believe it) and we would celebrate with some special posts, pageantry, and little treats. Boy I really failed to follow up on that, and now today’s post is already our 1999th…
But there is still plenty of time for a Ferrebeekeeper jamboree (“jamboreekeeper”?)! Let’s start the festivities today with a special gift for you: a free flounder PDF for coloring:
2020 Coloring Flounder with Invaders
If you don’t feel like downloading the PDF, there is the black and white drawing right up at the top of today’s post. It features a timely flounder for 2020–a big invader flounder with dead black eyes and a pitted lifeless surface of desiccated craters and impact marks. Upon the flounder are alien shock troops…or maybe cyborgs? (…or maybe they are more familiar political militia). Space seeds and mysterious cardioids float down from the night sky onto a writhing landscape of burning Gothic cloisters, ruined mechanized battle equipment, and little refugees (and wriggling, beached flatfish of course ).
In some ways, this chaotic picture is not what I wanted for a celebration (where is the lavish garden party flatfish PDF already?), but in other deeper ways it is perfect for this moment of international floundering. Anyhow, you didn’t really want to color more ribbons, jewels, and roses did you? Well maybe you actually don’t want to color at all, but if you do break out your pencils and crayons, send me a jpeg of your efforts at wayneferrebee@gmail.com and we will post a little disaster gallery! And, as always, keep tuning in! There is more excitement for our big MM celebration…or there will be, as soon as I dream it up…
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!
So, over the holidays I gave some coloring books to my friends’ daughter. It was gratifying to see how the coloring books, by grace of being the last presents of Christmas Day, stole her attention from the electronic doodads and the flying fairy which could actually fly (although, as a toymaker, I am still thinking about that particular toy). In gift-giving, as in gymnastics, going last is a position of strength! The little girl, who is four, graciously let me color one of the illustrations–a sacred elephant which was composed of magical spirit beings from Thai mythology–which I colored in fantastical fluorescent hues (while she colored her way through a collection of amazing animals from around the world). As we were coloring, the adults at the party made various observations about coloring—about who colored inside the lines and what it indicated about their personality and so forth.
From Dover’s “Thai Decorative Designs” Coloring Book amazing
I think my elephant turned out pretty well (although since, I failed to take a picture, you’ll just have to believe me). Also I think my friend’s daughter was inspired to try some new techniques—like darkening the edges of objects. It also seemed like she tried to pay more attention to the lines.
The experience took me back to my own childhood when I loved to color coloring books, especially with grandma or mom (both of whom had a real aptitude for precise coloring). However I was also reminded of being deeply frustrated by the books on several levels as a child. First of all, I was exasperated by my traitorous hands which would not color with the beautiful precision and depth that the adults could master. I always saved the best picture in coloring books for later when I was grown up and could color it as beautifully as I wanted it to be colored. As far as I know, these pictures all remain uncolored—somewhere out there is that 1978 Star Trek coloring book picture with all the crazy aliens, just waiting for me to come back with my Prismacolor pencils and nimble adult fingers and finally make it look good…
Most importantly, I was frustrated that the most amazing pictures—the ones that were exactly as I wanted them to be–were not in the coloring books at all. You have to make up the ones you really want and draw them yourself.
Aesthetics have gone wrong—it has been taken over by charlatans who cannot think up good pictures. Instead today’s marquis artists are obsessed only with provocatively going outside the lines. Like the kid in first grade who always did what he thought would be shocking, this quickly becomes tiresome. Additionally, I think we all discovered that the “shock value” kid was easily manipulated. So too are today’s famous artists who all end up serving Louis Vuitton (I’m looking at you, Takashi Murakami) or other slimy corporate masters who simply want free marketing. Art and aesthetics should be more than ugly clickbait! Our conception of beauty shapes are moral conception of society and the world. Therefore my New Year’s resolution is to be a better painter… and to explain myself better. Next year I promise to write more movingly about beauty, meaning, and humankind’s place in the natural world (which I have finally realized is the theme of my artworks). Avaricious marketers and art school hacks are not the only people who can take to the internet to explain themselves!
Takashi Murakami 7
And of course there will be lots of amazing animals and magnificent trees and exquisite colors and crazy stories from history (and we will always keep one eye on outer space). The list of categories over there to the left is becoming restrictive! It’s time to bust out and write about all sorts of new things! Happy New Year! 2015 is going to be great! Enjoy your New Year’s celebrations and I’ll see you back here next year!
ferrebeekeeper 