Fish and Sea-things
As I introduce you to more of my artwork I hope you get used to the idea that style consistency doesn’t matter. Comparing the first and last images below you can see the way that simple mask-and-fill-with-pattern results in a difference you can taste from Leviathan. (Layerworks used in this.) I understand that Leviathan is a more accomplished work. But to talk about combining images it’s vital to have the simple version as well.
The ultimate goal is to get more deft at at combining different styles, images, levels of complexity into any single artwork. Differences in the level of abstraction are very interesting in their ability to convey information. I love Neo Rauch because he mixes passages of skilled painting with patches of haphazard painting.
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The sea is filled with optics and sounds that are unfamiliar to land beasts, and animals and plants adapted to life in liquid. You don’t walk from here to there, you swim. Your body wiggles, you move along. How different from walking on legs in sand just at the water’s edge. Or bounding, as I once saw in a video, when a big kangaroo seemed to get annoyed with human company and jumped in the ocean, swan far far out. Paddling with mighty legs.
The wavering glittering reflections in water get mirrored in the sloshy forms of kelp, octopus, even sea anemones. Kelp, unlike oaks, wave and tress in the currents. The oaks will move in the wind in a different pattern than the elms, and so it must be with sea denizens in varying currents. The body type will match the pushing forces of the local water