3 posts tagged “fish”

Back to fish. In my post on 12/8, I was discussing my inexplicable affinity for drawing fish. As I mentioned, my friend Kelton Osborn has also been drawn to fish. (Hmmm....draw, drawn. Just looked it up, and "draw" is from the Latin root duco, ducere meaning lead or draw. Draw has many, many meanings. But I digress.)

My sister thoughtfully sent me an entry from an online symbolism dictionary, in the hopes of clarifying the fish attraction. Here are some of the highlights:

"The symbolic nature of fish is as inseparable from that of WATER as the two are connected in life. In psychology, water symbolizes the depths of the unconscious, and fish are the "live material from the depths of the personality, relating to fertility and the life-giving powers of the maternal realms within us" (Biederman, 131). Yet fish are also cold-blooded, not driven by passion, and often represent such emotionless entities.

Can also be seen as wisdom, faith, freedom, wholeness and purity. The symbol of the cosmic philosophy of Tao is yin-yang. This symbol is also popular with New Age followers and shows a couple of fish, Yin and Yang, where Yin's eye is in the Yang fish, and Yang's eye is in the Yin fish. In Japan, the fish means well-being, happiness and freedom. It is one of the Eight Auspicious Symbols used in Buddhism imported from China. The fish symbolises living in a state of fearlessness, without danger of drowning in the ocean of sufferings, and migrating from place to place freely and spontaneously."

So that's helpful. Depending on my mood, I can be concerned that I might be an emotionless entity, or be comforted by the knowledge that I'm not in danger of drowning in the ocean of sufferings.

Kelton, my very talented architect/designer/artist friend, was kind enough to send me the darkly beautiful fish lithographs included in this post. Obviously, the smiley pen-and-ink fish is mine.

I've always loved patterns, and have been drawing them since I was a tiny kid. I have a plaster-headed, faux-fur bodied puppet that I made when I was in kindergarten, and it's head is covered with circles filled with abstract patterns. If I can find it in the basement I'll put up a pic of it.

I do have a picture of a drawing I did as a gift for my favorite second-grade teacher, Miss McGee.She was kind enough to track me down about 8 years ago and return the drawing, which was really neat since I didn't haveanything quite like that in my kid-art portfolio. I drew a dragon in seventh grade, which is also filled with abstract patterns, and gave circle drawings to my favorite teachers in middle school also. Like Henry's notebooks, my school books throughout my entire educational career are filled with doodles and patterns and not too much in the way of schoolwork.

So it seems very comfortable to be designing patterns again, and I love it. I've continued to do a few pen-and-ink drawings through the years, mostly as charity auction donations, and they've all been fish filled with patterns. Why fish? I don't know, but I recently discovered that my friend Kelton had also been drawn to fish throughout his artistic life.

I didn't ever consider that I could design patterns commercially, until just recently. They always just seemed like a fun artistic distraction that could be made into fine art when needed, but I knew I wasn't going to be a fine artist. I've always been more interested in large scale production for my work, maybe because I began as a graphic designer. Just recently I've discovered that there are people who are "pattern designers." I know that seems like it should be really obvious, especially for someone like me who has been in the kids' products and textile industry for such a long time. But I always felt like I had to produce something that used the patterns that I designed myself -- bedding, or placemats, or stationary. And that's what I've been doing with Grow ever since.