Denizens of the deep -- and elsewhere

I thought I'd have to explain the word "denizens"  but the Collins on-line dictionary says it's among the top 30% of popular English words.  Can this really be?!  Well, maybe it's one of those 21^st century words that climbed out of 20^th century semi-obscurity -- like "ubiquitous," "decry," "egregious" -- and is now used "fulsomely" (ack!! - check this and know that I'm on the side of traditional usage) all over the airwaves.

The title "Denizens of the Deep" has been on my mind as, I thought, a vintage science-fiction movie.  But I guess I was confusing it with "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and that humungous submarine-swallowing squid.

In fact, it's a perfectly respectable natural history publication (1907) by one of those cool guys you've never heard of:--  F. Martin Duncan aka Francis Duncan Smith, a natural historian and a pioneer in micro-photography and filmmaking.  Wikipedia describes his 1903 films:

 "Among the films shown were Circulation of Blood in a Frog's Foot, Red Sludge Worms and the notorious The Cheese Mites, the views of which were preceded by a scene of a man (played by Duncan himself) horrified by what he sees when he views a piece of Stilton through a magnifying glass."

Well, we're neither in a Stilton cheese nor 20,000 leagues under the sea -- but here in the studio, where "Denizens" is the title for a series I've begun.  I want to become  more adept at capturing faces and features, working from sketches and remembered glimpses of "denizens" in my community.

Starting point:-- a quick cardboard study for the first in the series, "Ringlets."

Sometimes, as in this one, the face and the outfit are not necessarily from the same person I've surreptitiously studied on bus trips or in coffee shops.  Here's the final version of "Denizens Series - Ringlets" (copyright 2019).  Can you count the rings?  -- include her hair in the head-count, too.

My next subject was a strongly featured older man, who I watched using his laptop in a coffee shop.  He seemed so like a veteran European filmmaker, but my first quick cardboard sketch took a few years off his age.

If truth be told from the snippets of conversation I heard when an earnest young woman joined him, I think the guy was actually a real estate agent -- maybe in a European film?  Here he is in "Denizens Series  - Filmmaker." (copyright 2019)

Something else I'm working on with this series is learning to paint on canvas -- a quite different support from the fine arts paper I usually paint on.   I'll still work on paper for my larger pieces. (Art students, are you listening?)

Now, inspired by the Denizens just off the dock of my Pender Island friends' home, I'm diving deeper to meet my goal of 10 denizens in this new series.

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

As I was finishing my recent painting starring Dr. Menzies,  I thought.... "Hmmm.  Where I have I seen something like this before?  A painting of a sculpture in the open air.  An onlooker...."   

Suddenly it came to me -- the artist Georgio deChirico.  He did plenty of plaza scenes like this "Piazza d'Italia" where sculptures and onlookers play a role:

 And when I checked further online, I found one of the sculpted heads I'd been thinking of in "Song of Love":-- (and if you want to know more about this curious painting, check here.)

This lesser known surrealist has stuck in my mind because of a wonderful story I once read about him.  A young couple who admired deChirico sought him out on their travels through Greece.  When they found his studio at the end of a dusty hot road, he invited them inside -- along with their cat, who couldn't be left in the car. 

This is not necessarily a reflection on deChirico's art, but the cat totally freaked out -- roared around the studio, tipping over easels and paints, making a complete mess of both finished works and works in progress.  The young admirers were of course mortified -- but the artist was totally undisturbed as he helped them corner their cat and ensure it was soothed.  As they tried desperately to apologize, he said, "It doesn't matter at all.  What is important is that no living creature should be afraid."  That's my kind of guy!

And perhaps it was this incident that led to his "Surrealist Scene with a Cat."

Well, cats are one good reason to hang out with this artist, and maybe there are other bonds between us.  Remember my egghead armature for what became the mini-sculpture Gaia?

  

Take a look at deChirico's "Face of Metaphysics."

Am I a surrealist at heart?  Well, consider how much fun I had with an assignment in last year's on-line course -- doing a fishy emulation of the contemporary surrealist Afarin Sajedi.

 And here's something more -- a fascinating treasure found in my back yard garden, a 3" rusty nail:

I carefully wiped it off and saved it, even before I knew the Vancouver Art Gallery would be hosting a Giacometti exhibit this year.  See any resemblance?

Maybe the surrealists can explain some of the wacky digressions my art is inclined to take.  As deChirico said:

"One must picture everything in the world as an enigma, and live in the world as if in a vast museum of strangeness."

 Or maybe it's a whole lot simpler than that.  In the words of that old rogue Henry Miller:

"Paint what you love and die happy."

And doesn't that shine through in deChirico's "Sun on the Easel"?