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Not only is this World ocean Week, but it turns out today is National Doughnut Day! What a week…
Pancreatic Doughnut (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015), Oil on Panel
Before I was a dedicated flounderist, the dominant subject matter of my painting was doughnuts (I felt that the torus shape represented the universe/infinity, while the tiny size and sugariness of the confection made it a perfect representation of the hedonic nature of human aspirations). Like all artists who change direction, I still have a few doughnut paintings I need to finish up. Who knows what will happen to them? It is unclear if they will ever be finished…
However, I also have some finished paintings which I never showed anywhere or did anything with: they just hang around on my walls perplexing me. To celebrate National Doughnut Day, kindly allow me to present one of my favorite of these previous generation paintings. This is “Pancreatic Doughnut” which I painted in 2015. There is a sugary sprinkled doughnut, a cherry-dip ice cream cone, and a strip of super-fatty bacon (which is glistening with blobs of oil just like a real strip of bacon). These problematically sugary items are joined by a sinister bottle of rum and an alcohol molecule which looks like a friendly corgi but is definitely something more problematic.
The real thrust of the painting is found in the Congolese Mangbetu knife…a sinister hook which is about to plunge directly into the diseased pancreas in the bottom right corner of the picture. Yet all is not lost. Above the pancreas, an axolotl floats serenely like a translucent white angel. Axolotls seem to possess the secret of regeneration. Perhaps the grim effects of all of that metabolic damage and gastroenterologic mayhem could be undone…if only we could focus our efforts and our research on the right things instead of desperately trying to trap each other with addictive fixations. It’s a dream of course, but thus do all great things begin.
Happy National Doughnut Day!
I was going to showcase a mermaid painting from the glorious 19th century–a golden age of exquisite oil painting (when the technique of the masters combined with stupendous wealth and the camera made visual refernces available for the first time without yet stealing the show), but then I looked up at the wall and noticed I have my own mermaid painting–it just isn’t finished yet. So I am afraid the 19th century masters will have to rest on their laurels until another day…and I am also afraid you will have to use your imagination to fill in some of the unfinished details of this work in progress. This is one of the last of my torus-themed paintings, and you can see the great flounder lurking beneath it, preparing to take over as the central leitmotif of this era of my art. The torus is made of a coil of strange purple cells (or rope) which is surmounted by an alien lotus blossom. On the left a classic mermaid sings meltingly of the splendor of the seas, while on the right a trio of sinister dark carnival “mermaids” race towards the enigmatic central shape. All around them the ocean blooms with life–mollusks and crabs desport themselves as a made-up roosterfish swims by and a moray looks on in wonder. Yet humankind is also present. The lost lure with its beguilement and hooks hints at our trickery, although a masked diver suggests we are not inured to the lure of the dep in our own right. Tune in later to see how it looks when it is done!
Cockerel Cycle and French Cruller (Wayne Ferrebee, 2014, oil on panel)
It’s National Doughnut Day! To celebrate, here are two paintings from my Microcosmic Doughnut Series. Topologists and astrophysicists posit that our universe has a toroid shape—so I have combined my disparate background in history, toymaking, natural history, and Flemish-style painting to craft doughnut-shaped microcosms. Within these intricate cosmological confections, people and animals from throughout time converge in a never-ending circle—in the manner of the water cycle, the Krebs diagram, or an ouroboros. Thus the individual elements in these paintings not only have metaphorical significance, they are also part of a dynamic larger picture. Each landscape of dynamically intertwined symbols represents the cycles within individual life, history, or biology. Each little doughnut painting is its own self-contained world; yet, taken in aggregate, the individual stories of predators and prey, metabolism, historicism, world trade, or biorhythms of organisms signify even larger cycles of creation and destruction not readily discernible from the fixed perspective of an individual life. For example, the one above is about a classical French bon-vivant…or maybe it is about frogs or about cocks or chicken eggs. There is also a fertility aspect to it (not to mention a French cruller in the middle).
Furnace Doughnut (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, oil on panel)
This second painting is less easily explained. A variety of brightly colored synthetic organisms fly up out of a baker’s furnace. Above the mysterious swarm, a humanoid figure in an asbestos suit and a blue-hot dragon spray fire on a salamander which basks in the radiant pure energy. Blue-black gothic stoves dance around beneath the centerpiece of the composition: a glowing lava doughnut congealing out of the primal kitchen…or is it just a delicious glazed doughnut with chocolate icing and an orange squiggle? The whole scene makes me hungry for cheap baked pastries…and for raw creation. Now I’m off to paint some more. Let me know what you think (and enjoy Doughnut Day with your loved ones).
Crystal Owls (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
Here are some more images of beauty, depravity, whimsy , and the mundane from my little sketchbook. The first picture above shows crystal owls flying through a jeweled night.
Flounder and Doughnut (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
This is an artificial tribal world of doughnuts, flounders, and jittery totems. It is a dual world of dark teal and apricot.
Friend’s Backyard (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
This is a sketch of my friend Reis’ backyard in Park Slope at dusk. I particularly like the Serbian spruce in the center.
Backyard in Spring (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
This is a whimsical interpretation of my backyard in early spring as seen by Max Fleischer in a bad dream. Look at my chiminea walking around talking to the plants!
Tropical Dancer (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
This was a lot prettier in the real world. It is a beautiful tropical dance recital with people checking their programs.
Untitled (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
No comment.
Whim-etery (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
I love paisleys and I have been trying to incorporate them into little landscapes with animals and scenery. Thanks for looking. As always, your comments are greatly appreciated!
As mentioned in previous posts, my parents have a majestic flock of pilgrim geese (and one peculiar Canada goose). They have more giant beautiful bright white eggs than they know what to do with…so, when I was home for Easter, I worked in the ancient Ukrainian medium of pysanky. This involves writing on eggs with a heated wax stylus and then dipping the eggs in progressive layers of batik dyes. The end results have a beautiful color unlike any other art works, and the eggs are lovely in their own right—both as a curvilinear art medium and as symbols of existence (see yesterday’s post).
Most of my works here feature donuts (which is my personal symbol for the universe) and or flounder. There are some strange alien-looking mollusks too and some stars. However I like the radish and the mantis shrimp best. Those arthropods are amazing creatures (although they are hard to draw with hot wax). I need to blog about them in the near future. In the meantime, hopefully the great serpent of the pagan Ukrainian underworld will be satisfied with this batch of eggs.
Brooklyn Heights (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
Here are three little pictures from the sketchbook book I carry around with me. The first picture is a view across the East River from the Wall Street Wharf. In the second picture dark shadows and monsters are calling out my name. Hmm…With typical art world narcissism, I took the title of today’s post from this picture.
Shadowy Friends (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
Finally here is a radiant sky deity enjoying some beer and a doughnut. He is attended by doting cherubim and towering heavenly clouds as he partakes. Only a lamprey and a fly spoil the image somewhat. A plover beholds the entire tableau with amazement.
Skygod Doughnut (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
There is Nothing Suspicious About These Glowing Treats in the ocean Depths (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, oil on panel)
Through the dark and improbable marketing magic of the Big Baking industry, today is National Donut Day (or possibly “National Doughnut Day” depending on how classical your tastes in pastry spelling are). Donuts are sweet snacks usually made of deep-fried flour dough. The traditional doughnut is ring shaped, probably because that is a very efficient way to make and evenly fry such a pastry (if the cake was a sphere or a disk, there would be uncooked dough in the middle), however there are also rod-shaped doughnuts, crème filled donuts, crullers, bearclaws, and heavens only knows what else! Donuts have a creation myth wherein a magnificent Dutch sea captain who loved pastries was piloting his galleon through a towering storm. The mariner was unwilling to let his ship sink and his crew perish, but he was equally unwilling to forgo the pleasure of fried pastries for even one moment, so he stuck the donuts on the ship’s wheel so he could devour them as he faced off against Poseidon. I say this is a myth because it seems likely that donuts predate the Dutch. They were probably invented by Sumerians in equally trying but now unknown circumstances. It’s still a great story though! I have heard that law enforcement officers have their own secret donut creation myths, but, since I am not a policeman these sacred traditions have never been vouchsafed to me. Maybe if you ask any of our friends in blue about this, you should be very circumspect…
Not pictured: storm, donuts, fat heroic captain…
Ferrebeekeeper has an immoderate fascination with toruses which stems from a peculiar combination of aesthetic, mathematical, and mystical factors. In my personal world of symbolism, the universe itself is a torus (it seems like it might well really be a torus, but our understanding of such matters is incomplete). The most familiar torus here on our Newtonian scale is the humble–but delicious & multitudinously variable—donut! So I paint lots of symbolic microcosmic paintings of donuts. I was amassing a whole wall of them, but I started to sell some so that I don’t have to live on the streets. Maybe they will be worth a bunch of money someday…. You could do me a huge favor and say exactly that to the art world professionals whom you meet in your life!
…or if YOU happen to have an art gallery, contact me directly and we’ll work something out forthwith!
I have already put up photos of some of these doughnut paintings on this blog here and here (to say nothing of the painting of a toroid honey bundt cake which serves to represent the entire blog). In celebration of National Donut Day, here are two more Wayne Ferrebee original oil paintings (well, digital photographs of the same). The painting at the top is grandiloquently titled “There is Nothing Suspicious About these Glowing Treats in the Ocean Depths.” Three magnificent sugary donuts glowing within drift among the happy denizens of the deep ocean. A friendly anglerfish proffers a funny lure, while a near-eastern ewer drifts toward the ocean bottom. A glass squid with orange dots scuttles past the scene. In the murky background a passing shadow resolves into another friendly creature of some sort. A cynical & world-wary viewer might interpret the work as some sort of warning about impossible things that are too good to be true, but the enlightened art-lover recognizes it as an evocation of benthic wonders!
Cell Donut (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, oil on panel)
The second donut painting here is a very tiny painting (4 inches by 4 inches–so smaller than the image onscreen) which concerns the micro-world beneath us. It is appropriately titled “Cell Donut.” Against a dark magenta background, a courtly mummer performs some sort of dance/pantomime for a paramecium and a clutch of glowing eggs (or possibly cells). A diagrammatic cell is in the lower right corner with all the color and complexity of a future city.
I took a course in cell-biology one and in the first moments, as the biochemist started writing out the molecular processes of respiration, it hit me that the drama at a cellular level is, if anything, more intense and complicated than the goings on at our familiar human-size frame of reference. “Cell Donut” is meant to remind us that the real rewards and perils are within us already–for in the microsphere within our bodies, billions of cells are fighting, metabolizing, reproducing, and recycling with maddening vigor and ceaseless action. Also the tiny donut in the middle of the painting is a classic plain donut…an ideal symbol for national Donut Day (as opposed to some of my other dozens of donut paintings, which can often be quite baroque, phantasmagorical, or strange…or are just straight-up bagels!)
I hope you enjoy these paintings, and I also hope you manage to drop by the bakers to enjoy a well-deserved donut or two!
Note: No matter what I do, or how I try, I cannot get these paintings to display properly! It is obvious that Word Press hates me and hates my artwork, despite the fact that I have essentially been working for them for free for half a decade. I’m afraid you’ll have to click on the paintings in order for them not to appear all hideously cropped and mutilated as they look above. [sotto voce] mutter mutter…should have chosen “Blogger”…mutter, curse… “never “Fresh Pressed”… grumble grumble.
ferrebeekeeper 