Sunday, November 28, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 457

Title: "What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving, Sir."

"So it is, so it is; if we get it."

15.5 inches by 10.75 inches
acrylic paint on found paper
November 21, 2010

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4 comments:

  1. TitusNovember 28, 2010 at 9:39 PM

    One to look and look at and never see.

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  2. Matt KishNovember 29, 2010 at 10:36 AM

    It is so very much about what we choose and what we do not choose. Terrifying how our minds create our realities.

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  3. Dan NelsonJanuary 2, 2011 at 2:29 PM

    And this is an interesting one because at first it's not as striking as many of the drawings. But the more I look, the more I see in it. We're looking at the whale down through the water, which distorts, and so like anything in the water, you could reach down thinking you're going to catch hold of it, but it eludes you. This illustration works perfectly on so many levels.

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  4. Matt KishJanuary 3, 2011 at 10:45 AM

    Dan those are extremely perceptive comments and I am very grateful to you for sharing them. You hit on a great deal of what I was trying to convey with this piece which at first does seem so simple. I have learned an enormous amount from working on this project, and one of the things that has been a rather drastic change for is learning how to edit myself. Prior to this, I truly believe I suffered (maybe still) from a kind of horror vacui when it came to drawing. I would fill every available space with lines and details and rendering. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't, and I have learned a lot about holding back and trying to let the compositions breathe. This was one of those times.

    Also with this piece, with the simple use of stark black and white paint, I wanted to show how to Ahab especially, there is no ambiguity. There was never, ever any other reason for this voyage other than to hunt and destroy the whale Moby Dick. Everything else Ahab communicated to the crew was a ruse to manipulate them into assisting him in his quest for vengeance. The dialogue between Ahab and Starbuck illustrates this terrifying gulf in perception amazingly well, and I hope I was able to hammer that home with this piece.

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