Amber Gris

"Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is."

-Moby Dick by Herman Melville

This is another "in-between-painting". My "in-between-paintings" are things I putter with in between doing other stuff. There is no consistent rhyme or reason to their subject matter.

This one is bigger than most (shall we say "whale sized"?) and it actually has a subject (instead of the usual colourful shapes). And it took more time than others - it might not even be done but I don't want to work on it anymore... at least for awhile.

I was reading Moby Dick when I started it but this is not Moby Dick for that whale was old and white and gnarly. This is just a generic Sperm Whale modeled after an old print I liked (see end of post).

I call it "Ambergris" after the highly valued whale-vomit of the Sperm Whale. It took on that theme by accident when I realized that the pinkish blobs around the whale corresponded to the pink it its mouth. In actuality ripe ambergris is grey in colour.

I first learned about ambergris when I read 'Perfume' (by Patrick Suskind) and always found it fascinating and wonderful that somehow people figured out how to make something as lovely and light as perfume from big, grey blobs of whale puke that smell like shit, literally, when first regurgitated.

...I even talked about this in my art-school interview and I believe it's what got me in! hahaha! (Oh 18-year-old me. You were awesome.) Anyway, here I am well-past 30, and still talking about the same old fecal matter...

Hmmm... perhaps that is some kind of personal life motto: "Making cool stuff out of shit!"

(click to enlarge.)

I took these pictures in the evening so the lighting wasn't good... but I wanted to get closure on this image. Will try to get something better another day... maybe...

This is where she hangs, for the time-being at least.

The whale went through quite a few colour changes on it's way to boring old grey.

Originally it was going to be white like Moby.

This is the old print that inspired the thing. I tried to work my whale up from a grid of this print but that got quite boring and I abandoned the tactic early on.