Paint and Pixels

The Octocurse

I just finished this painting for a show that starts on Saturday. The theme of the show is "Voodoo Spells and Tiki Curses". During the opening of the last show (if you didn't show up to it, you're a jerk), I luckily met a man named "Bob White" who puts on art shows in Denver, with a group he created called "Bad Art for Bad People", and asked me to be in some shows. I guess some people would feel insulted to be asked to participate with a group by that title, but I certainly wasn't. Good art and good people tend to bore me... although the wine and cheese is sometimes an added bonus.

My intentions were to create a style of the painting that would resemble something out of a story book, because lately the kids and I have been very inspired by some of the talented artists that illustrate children's books. We go to the library and only look for books with really cool pictures. Then we look up the illustrator on the library database and check out all of the books illustrated by them. I think it is interesting how illustrations can become so much more intruging and beautiful, because the artist's composition was limited by the boundaries of the plotline of the story. It's an example of how boundaries actually enhance creativity instead of stunting it. Some of our favorite illustrators are Graeme Base, Anna Vojtech and Audrey Colman. Graeme Base is the illustrator of Animalia (his most famous book), which took him over five years to illustrate. Each individual page is truly a masterpeice in itself, and his other books are the same way.

So originally I was thinking that it would be cool to have the title of my painting seem like it was an actually line out of a story book. This was my original title:

"While an unsuspecting victim swims at the surface, the octopus lurked below, clutching his magic tiki mask which he had obtained years earlier from a group of sailors, after he capsized their boat."

The tag information was due last Friday, and when I emailed Bob White my painting information, he replied with a very curt email saying "make the title MUCH shorter". So then I felt pretty stupid, and when I told Matt about it, before I could even get half way through saying my title, he said "well that WAS a pretty stupid title!! What were you thinking?!". He is so comforting when I fail. So then I emailed Bob back with THIS title "The Fatal Octocurse" and then added some remark like this "THAT short enough for ya, HUH?!". But now I wish it was just "The Octocurse", but I don't have the nerve to ask him to change it again. What-ev.

You probably can't tell from my photographs, but this painting has some 3-D elements that extend from the canvas. I did this with a meticulous process involving vinyl floor tiles, paper mache, spackling paste, and a hot glue gun (all products I discovered in my basement). Don't try to do it with play-doh cause it doesn't work.

I included a seahorse in the painting, but no spider or butterfly... can't have it all. Did you know that only male seahorses get pregnant? And that's not referring to male seahorses that used to be female seahorses.

This is a lion fish. It is pretty awesomely creepy looking. It's almost as cool as a leafy seadragon but I didn't put the seadragon in the painting cause I didn't want it to look alienish or sci-fi for those veiwers who are not so educated on real-life creepy sea creatures. If you want to know how creepy the lion fish is, read THIS artical, which I just came across today on MSN. Here is a line out of the artical, that sounds more like a line from a fictional story book, but it is 100% true and if this isn't horrifying, I don't know what is!:
"This may very well become the most devastating marine invasion in history".
Maybe I should make that the title of my painting. Nope. Too Late.