More Flatfish Art

My art theme this year has been flatfish, and I have made quite a lot of them.  I think the results are very strong, but the slightly ludicrous subject leaves me at a disadvantage when I am trying to explain my work via the unforgiving medium of tweet or elevator pitch.  Nothing vexes a group of high-fashion socialites quite like blurting out “I mostly paint elaborate symbolic flatfish!” The most obvious quick explanation is to make a joke about how I have been floundering (which is certainly true in many ways), however there is a lot more to this favorite subject than that.

The Pleuronectiformes (flatfish) are indeed flat–like paintings and drawings–which makes them an ideal medium for compositions.  They are a favorite prey for humankind–which perfectly suits my theme of hooks, lures, traps, and beguilements (which seem to be taking over ever more in human society as we proliferate and jockey for resources).  Flatfish also provides an immediate environmental theme–for they are quickly being fished into extinction (like almost all of the ray-finned fishes).  Yet flatfish are no innocents.  Like many large fish, these animals are all highly sophisticated predators. In order to succeed they make use of their own subterfuges.  Flatfish blend in. They can literally change colors like chameleons.  I sort of think of them as the middle class of the biome, squeezed between the little shrimpkins, copepods, and minnows they gobble up and the rapacious pelicans, dolphins, humans and suchlike superpredators who in turn hunt them with beaked hooks, sonar, and cruel nets.

Above all, flatfish are asymmetric–which means I can draw both of their expressive eyes without being forced to contemplate a lot of elaborate piscine bending.  Their asymmetry also makes them stand out among all of the vertebrates. The universe has twisted them at adolescence–but it has given them an indefinable topological advantage as well.  Also look at their little irregular paisley eyes.

Of course Meg Miller thinks I have gone crazy, and perhaps she is right.  But after a while staring in the windows, “outsider artist” is the only card left to play.  You never know, I could still leap out of the substrate and start gobbling shrimp any day now.  Kindly check out my flatfish on Instagram and write me about your thoughts on the subject.  Flounders are sad, but they are comical too (which is unusual in visual art) so everyone has an opinion.  Please let me know how these flatfish make you feel!

 

Flounderful

I have been working on a flatfish themed art project!  There will be more to announce soon and great fanfare: I promise.  However, for now, to tease the wonders that are to come, here are a number of small flatfish artworks that I have been making at lunch and on the train and during similar spare moments.  Wordpress hates me with undying vehemence (which is to say, if I label a picture with its name, their program drags it off-center and makes it look ugly), so I am going to write the name in the body of the tex beneath each little fish, and write a short blurb.  Please, please let me know what you think, even if it is a one word assessment and I will keep working on my big presentation!  Oh–the picture at the top is: Bongo Flounder (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper) it depicts a bongo turning into a flounder through the auspices of the horned god.  A baffled yokel hunter watches in astonishment.  Morphing animals are a big problem for me (sigh), so this image has deep personal meaning.

Baterpillar fluke (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper):  A Sumerian walking at night sees a mystical fluke surrounded by nocturnal garden creatures.

Arcane Flounder (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper): An Armenian mystic walking at night contemplates the intricacies of a magical flatfish surrounded by arcane creatures.

BustaFlounder (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper): a flounder parties too hard and is forced to re-live the disgraces of the 1980s New York art scene.  A chained mastiff and disappointed prawn look on with weary resignation.

Flatfish in the Night Garden (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper): through the intercession of various ancient deities, a hive of bees is allowed to plleneate at night.  The relentless geometrical shape on the shimmering dab’s back indicates that such a work ethic may have inscrutible consequences.

Gnome City Flatfish (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper): A small colorful city is overtaken by a fungal outbreak as winged beings fly by.

Hopefully you have enjoyed this little flounderful gallery.  Like I said, get ready for some exciting news (hint, hint: the launch of an ancillary site for Ferrebeekeeper).  keep on commenting and i will keep on floundering.  Thanks!

 

Flatfish Art

Last week I blogged about flatfish.  These fascinating benthic predators can be found in oceans worldwide…however my interest in the asymmetric masters of blending in transcends pure ichthyology.  I have been busy drawing a series of intricate pen and ink drawings of flatfish for a project.  I will show you some of these large drawings one of these days, but I have also been drawing a series of small humorous and surreal flatfish in spare moments…during the commute or lunch break.  I am putting these whimsical, comical, and absurd flounders in brightly colored frames for fun.

Here is some of the series:

This flounder seems to have an industrial refinery in Kazakhstan on his belly.  In accordance with his landlocked status, strange mythical beasts of Central Asia gambol in the twilight skies around him.

This flounder has Greco-Roman objects around him.  The chameleon above his back reminds the viewer of the true nature of flatfish. The strange quadripeds on his back betoken a different age of agrarian labor.

This flounder is at home in the ocean (where he is joined by apparitions and animals which look curiously like molecules or primordial forces.  Indeed, Gauss’ Law for electrical fields reminds us of the subtle but ineluctable flux which pervades interactions at all levels.

I have been trying to garner greater commercial interest in flatfish-themed art, and what is of greater commercial interest (and general prurient interest) than pop-superstar Miley Cyrus?  The famous singer coos atop a stolid turbot in the midst of an exotic and sensuous garden.  A musically literate person can play the musical phrase above the singer for a true multimedia experience. Miley’s cowgirl footwear hint at the true nature of this artwork.

Trailing streamers of ragged blue plasma, a wild eyed flatfish covered in squirming parasites rides a beam of yellow energy over an elongated pink woodchuck ghost.  What could be more straightforward?

A radiant orange flounder with the sun in his belly soars above some sort of pumping station or acetylene factory. In the sky above him, an overly eager gundam has fired an air-to-air missile at an endangered crane.  Oh no! What will happen next?

A long faced flounder made of stitched together toruses looks down upon a futuristic city of arcologies and bioengineered structures.

Mechanical innovation and the aristocratic southern lifestyle begin to seem increasingly at odds.  Predatory animals stock the riverine boundaries. A flying machine whirrs through the heavens.

The flounder at the top of the post–which features fanciful animals gathering around an elegant flounder with a brittle star on its belly is my personal favorite since I drew it with a dip pen–a style of drawing which generally results in the total destruction of the piece with the final stroke of the pen (as a huge blot of ink falls out), however in this rare case that did not happen so you can see some of the linear elegance of the medium.  All of these flatfish are created with ink and (generally) colored pencil, by yours truly Wayne Ferrebee in this year 2016 AD.  I’ll put up the second batch next week.  Thanks for looking and kindly leave any comments!

 

Seven Little Drawings

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!

Anniversary Announcement (with Doodles)

Root Doodle (Wayne Ferrebee, ink and colored pencil)

I’m going to steer clear of April Fool’s hijinks because today marks Ferrebeekeeper’s one year anniversary! Happy anniversary to all readers!  To celebrate, I am posting doodles which I drew during business meetings during the previous year.  Hopefully their silly nature will satisfy your funnybone and provide an adequate anniversary celebration.

Doodle of Dynastic Egypt (Wayne Ferrebee, pen and colored pencil)

This one year anniversary also provides an excellent occasion for the announcement of exciting future plans and for some remarks concerning the overarching structure and themes of this blog.  First, the announcement: I am going to launch my online gallery of my own artworks by the beginning of May.  I always intended this blog as an interdisciplinary means to provide context and meaning to my visual art—and yet I have never even shown any of my paintings or drawings to you!  For shame! So it’s time to grasp the chimera by the horns and post digital images of the finished paintings and drawings I currently have on hand. I hope to smoothly integrate the gallery of images with the daily blog:  ideally the two will combine to form a powerful and unique synthesis.  However,  the project is liable to be chaotic–and so I apologize in advance for disruptions and confusion.  On the plus side, I have been growing and improving as an artist so I am excited to share my works with you.  As always I am eagerly looking forward to your remarks and comments.  As proof of my earnestness I am publishing some scans of doodles I made during office meetings—but be assured these are only scribbles I made to pass the time.  I don’t have digital images of my real work yet, but my real oeuvre is coming soon to this space.

Blue urban caprice (Wayne Ferrebee, Colored pencil and pen)

OK…onward to some remarks about this blog itself:

The categories I have chosen for Ferrebeekeeper are the symbols I cling to in my quest for meaning. I’m going to explain better how they relate to one another. In the era before computers, people writing research papers or other large nonfiction works would keep relevant facts on notecards indexed by subject.  The daily posts which I put here are rather like such collected notecards.  I truly hope that each one is intriguing in its own right and provides you a daily moment of wonder at the beauty and strangeness of Greek monsters or wombats or the planet Mercury. But the interdisciplinary subjects serve a larger purpose.  There is a relationship between serpents, gothic art, and chthonic gods.  There are commonalities underpinning the lives of mollusks, turkeys, catfish, and mammals as they compete for resources and strive to reproduce themselves. As I put up my art gallery I will try to explain why I post about crowns (the short answer is I think they are funny) and how these jeweled hats actually represent certain important aspects of history and politics.  I will attempt to underline the relationships between these disparate subjects and explain how they provide meaningful frames of reference about the larger world.

Whimsical Doodle of City and Sweets (Wayne Ferrebee, pen and colored pencil)

I will leave you with the funniest of my doodles.  It portrays a handsome young mollusk cyclops wondering through a world of possibilities and enticements.  Things might not be perfect, but it still looks like he/she/it is having fun! I certainly am as I write this and I hope you are enjoying reading. Happy Bloggiversary and Happy April Fool’s Day! Here’s looking forward to another good year!

Casual sketch of a One-eyed Mollusk on Holiday (Wayne Ferrebee, pen and ink with crayon)