Dawn & Tilly and Turtle Soup

Two paintings recently completed at the studio a.k.a Octoplus Labs a.k.a Octo+Labs have had a long gestation period ( over a year ) and will soon be complimented by two more canvasses to complete the series.

The personification of Chance illustrated in sculpture was the seed of this series of paintings.

Numerous drawings (like the one bellow) started the path towards these paintings.

The standing figure on a sphere (Chance) and the standing figure on the cube (Wisdom) appear or are

considered in all of the compositions. The skeletal foot atop these shapes- a comment on where either condition leads- are also present in all pictures.

The imagery for the painting "Dawn and Tilly" comes from the tragic death of Dawn Brancheau during a "Dinner with Shamu" performance at Sea World Orlando Florida. I was in Orlando when this happened working on a Universal Studios project and saw first hand how the event affected the people of Orlando. For my part, I was deeply moved by the event. Later, I worked on the new orca show backdrop just next to where they kept Tilly and where also workers constructed a new tank in place of the tank where Dawn's death occurred. Peeking through the construction blinds I was struck by the immensity of the grey walls dropping down into the new tank- the tomb-like shaded darkness that held the public from viewing the replacement. All these experiences and others informed this painting.

The others in the series are more detached but hover around similar subjects.

"Turtle Soup" for instance is all about balance.

Not visual balance, although it was impossible to not edit towards some visual logic, but balance in the "meaning" that the images chosen are given. The balance begins with the offsetting of the overall theme of Chance vs. Wisdom with imagery from a promotional poster for the Marx Brothers film "Duck Soup" to the pairing of the images of an alligator snapping turtle with a congo eel (two of the strongest jawed creatures to be encountered in the fresh waters of Florida- one being a reptile and one being an amphibian)