When Rubber Ducks Go Bad
“There is only one plot - things are not what they seem.”
When I met this duck, he was with his family of at least a dozen members. The longer I looked at them, I realized something was out of place. I couldn’t put my finger on what or who that might be, but After a full day of pulling monoprints at my friend’s studio, I saw right through him. Like so many others I’ve met before, there was an exterior of pure innocence, But there was a darkness that sat inside those eyes – this was a duck without scruples, a dirty deal-making king pin. You’d find him hanging out with the other baby-faced mobsters.
Art brings clarity. When you study something objectively for a long, long time, you begin to see it as it truly is. Study human faces, hands, feet and bodies long enough, and you see that every human being is flawed somehow, perfection is a construct. Beauty in the human form is really only and always in the eye of the individual beholder and it is temporal and fleeting.
It has taken me a long time to arrive at understanding that human nature can be observed in the same way. Observe what you observe. Study by looking - not imagining what you see or listening to what is described or what is told to you. I believe this is why artists are so important to us in times of uncertainty and change. They create what they observe by seeing, processing, feeling and reporting. I happen to do that in a humorous manner, but I’m still reporting on what I see in the world. Did you know, one can render evil ineffective by seeing it for what it is and finding something beautiful in it to love?
The image of this little duck was recreated in Adobe Photoshop. The original was done in oil on Masonite panel for my friend Virginia Senior, who is an amazing artist and architect. She wanted to learn more about painting in oils and asked me to help teach her some basics. I knew exactly what I would paint for her that would be a good study that day and would also be something personal for her collection. It was she who had the rubber duck family and she was the reason I was looking so hard at those sweet toys. Sweet is not an advective I would use to describe Virginia – insightful, dynamic, wholehearted, but like me - not sweet and certainly not disingenuous like that little yellow bellied, cigar-smoking, martini-swilling tart of a duck!
