Connecting the dots (just don't try to count them)

 

If you read on to Beetlemania Part 2 and find yourself asking, "What's going on here?!", it all makes total sense in this artist's oeuvre.  You might remember some periods of high seriousness over the past year or so – the Zodiac Café series (portraits showing the physical characteristics of the Zodiac signs); the Emulation Series (copying or emulating the style of artists I admire) – and finally the recent decision to say to myself, "What the heck; I'll just have fun doing what I please."

 

I've mentioned before my fascination with the surrealist artist Georgio de Chirico and -- guess what – I'm totally in synch with the revered Metropolitan Museum of Art!  Their surrealism exhibit is on now – scroll down a bit in this link to view a brief video that gives a glimpse of it all.

 

Well, that's all I needed to feel confident in establishing my own new art movement, based on the dot at the middle of my own artistic centre:-- Colour!!  I've dubbed it "Chromo-surrealism" and everyone is welcome to bring their paints and crayons and join in the fun.

 

The Beetle Beings have a built-in rapport with this movement, and I found some of them in the fitness room, preparing for their imminent journey.  As I tried to capture them, I thought I'd build on an aspect of composition that often intrigues me:-- the pattern made by the spaces between objects.

 

This should have been simple but, even as I tried different sizes and poses, I couldn't quite pull it together.  It's all a game, you know.  The greater game in the "Beetlemania" series is to answer the question: "Can I make a coherent composition from all these disparate patterned parts?"

 

All right.  Back to Square One – trying fewer movable parts, more closely spaced.

 

Continuing to vary some of the poses, I decided to go with this layout.

 

With the plan finalized, this is a good place to introduce the fitness freaks.  Remember the rules:  No counting the dots; no chanting the  "Ladybird, Ladybird" chant – or singing the song.  (Confidential to Anne-with-an-E – check out the song and see where the ladybird daughter hid herself!)

 

 

And they are:  (1) Steel-blue Ladybird; (2) Twenty-spot Ladybird; (3) Ten-spotted Ladybird; (4) Seven-spot Ladybird; (5) Mealybug Ladybird.

 

This might also be the place to answer everyone's burning question:  Are there male ladybirds?  See here for the answer – and for the history back to the Middle Ages of "The Beetle of Our Lady."

 

Onward now to the beginnings of the colour lay-in:

 

And now…something entirely unprecedented:  I'm going to post a not quite finished painting that still needs some adjustments.  So what?   I'll be like Matisse and tiptoe back into the gallery and make my corrections after the exhibit is hung.

 

Oops!  That was Matisse.   Here's my own "Beetlemania - Pre-flight Warm-up (Semi-final version)" (copyright 2021).

  

And now – after all the commotion – the sun rises on a new day here in Vancouver, November 17^th, 2021.  We'll see where Chromo-surrealism takes us next.