Greetings from Zootopia! Questions about ordering? Call 561.707.3526 or usePlanetary Service.
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PATRICKPIERSON For the ordinary dodo, life is a zoo in the back of beyond.
COMING SOON! from Patrick Pierson's FYSHWERKS SG www.RattleTheChain.com (to purchase fine art oils, prints and posters, click on the RattleTheChain.com button on the left) “A progressive government shackles the individual citizen to the chain of taxation, effectively robbing all citizens of the freedom to increase the profit from the fruit of their labor by enslaving them in the tyranny of the collective, all for the greater good of the collective.” - Patrick Pierson
When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson
Spring/Summer 2009 Art Show Schedule
"The dodo has taken the final quantum leap to full proboscitude." - Patrijk Anton-Piers
WINDERMERE Art Festival on April 4 - 5 3409 Maguire Road, Windermere, FL (hours: Sat: 9am - 5pm; Sun: 9am - 5pm) WINNER! First Place in Mixed Media
FX International Creator's Alley on April 17, 18 & 19 Orange County Convention Center Orlando, FL (hours: Fri: 12pm - 7pm Sat: 10am - 6pm; Sun: 10am - 5pm)
SunFest Festival of Art & Music on May 1 - 3 West Palm Beach, FL (hours: Fri: 5PM - 10PM; Sat: Noon - 10PMSun: Noon - 9pm) WINNER! First Place in Mixed Media
Mayfaire-by-the-Lake Art Festival on May 9 - 10 Lakeland, FL (hours: Sat: 9am - 5pm; Sun: 10am - 5pm)
Boardwalk Art Show Festival on June 18 - 21 Virginia Beach, VA (hours: Thurs: 9am - 6pm; Fri & Sat: 10am - 6pm; Sun: 10am - 5pm)
The State Street Art Fair on July 15 - 18 Ann Arbor, MI (hours: Wed. thru Sat: 10am - 9pm)
WALT DISNEY'S Festival of the Masters on November 13, 14 & 13 Downtown Disney's Westside in Lake Buena Vista, FL (hours: Fri: 9:30am - 5:30pm; Sat: 10am - 6pm; Sun: 10am - 5pm)
I'm often asked questions like, "Hey Pat, why fish?" or, "You're kidding...dodos? Seriously?" not to mention, "No offense, but that looks like Joe Camel," and my personal favorite, "I get it! Jar-Jar Binks, right?" to which I'm tempted to respond with something smart-alecky like, "Yeah...everything but dogs in suits."
To finally set the record straight, here's my official response:All the inhabitants of Planet Zootopia - from aardvarks to zebras and every dodo, camel and fishhead in between - are anthropomorphic symbols: representations of the archetype we think of as the ego or 'self.' And what better vehicles than the tenacious little puffin, the gruff-and-tumble crustapien or the rakishly flamboyant dromedarian to illustrate with narrative (diegesis) and to show you with imagery (mimesis) a stylized reality in which the ordinary features of our world are brought into focus with wild exaggeration, the relationship of the imitation to the object it imitates being something like the relationship of synchronized swimming to dog-paddling.
Still with me?
In order to portray the helpless romantic as a guileless dodo or even a wild-eyed camel, living perpetually on the cusp betwixt heartbreak and connubial bliss (see 'NEWTON'S LAW' under Zootwerks Prints), I begin by plucking something from the continuum of everyday human experience and mimicking it. In the body of work I call Planet Zootopia I have framed reality in such a way that what is contained within the frame transports the viewer into the realm of hyperreality. Thus, paradoxically, the more extraordinary the imitation the easier it is to find the truth in it.
As Wolfgangsta Punk* once said, "Kapeesh?!"
I must confess - those daring dromedaries and their high-wire antics sometimes strike a dissonant chord, plumb the dark depths of the human condition as they are wont to do, but the diligent dodos always manage to find harmony when they set their sails in search of the life they've imagined. As for the fishheads and their cousins, the crustapiens, they paddle their own canoe, for "'tis nobler in the mind to be self-reliant." Besides, when we ride along with them, it helps us figure out what makes humans tick. Finally, bringing the dodos, the camels and their fanciful kin to life with whimsical strokes and a crafty quill is a far more poignant method of showing you who you are than gathering snapshots of the mundane for the sake of posterity: it's a bit like wearing a fine pair of kid gloves to hoist you onto the life-raft and slap the daylights out of you: it quickly brings you back from the brink, but gently.
I trust these vignettes will help unwrapilate our minds to wild possibilities and teach us to appreciate the wondrous strange experiences we share with one another: ultimately, to take off the purpose-colored spectacles and cognisize our true place in the 'verse - a place into which we've only recently awakened. This humble little flock of dodos and their diversigent coterie stand as a testament to our embrace of many of life's trials and tribulations while striving to live the life we imagine for ourselves.
- PATRICK PIERSONEmeritus Professor École des Beaux-Arts de Zootopieque PS There's a limited-time offer code for 40% off at the bottom of this page
*Wolfgangsta Punk is a wolf in sheep's clothing
Interested in Zootopian coffee mugs, tote bags, mousepads - even jigsaw puzzles? Copy & paste this web address into your browser window: www.ArtWanted.com/dr_omad_arian
Celebrating 150 years of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
"If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other...We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution."
- RICHARD DAWKINS Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford
Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn't got much of a bark And sure any he has it's all beside the mark. -James Joyce,Finnegan's Wake
Quoth the dodo: "To have lived at all is a dream come true; to live in awe of the dream is cause to celebrate and revel in the wonder of Life and all its delicious bedlammy; from lovers spurned and fortunes lost to plots unbound and rivals crushed, let us bask in the splendifery and wallow in the mayhemble - be it good or bad, we celebrate Life!"
I know. It's hard to believe, but over the course of the past decade the Fyshheads (from the Mariner Series, as I used to call it) have reigned supreme over Planet Zootopia, keeping their terrestrial cousins strictly under wraps - until now! The Fyshheads first swam into the light of day in the Summer of 1998 - after a bit of prodding from my wayward brother - and have now passed the baton to Deaudeux & Company, heralding the birth of a new Zootopian age: Planet Z doth rule! It's been ten tumultuous years that have run the gamut betwixt jaw-numbing, mind-droppings of success and teeth-breaking, heart-gnashings of failure, along with enough wailing and weeping to go around full sore. Honestly, my life has been filled with incredibly good fortune, most of which never happened: in fact, I may be one of the most alternately privileged and humble, notorious and unacknowledged, admired and berated artists you've never met, unless of course you have. Still, the Zooties have come a long way since their start as cute little Fyshhead sketches made in a P.O.S.H. converted loft in KCMO, their sole purpose to lift a despicably cutthroat artist-for-hire out of his down-and-out funk and maybe put some food on the table for a change. To my never-ending shock and wonderment, the Fyshheads have become one of the most widely unknown, almost totally overlooked, deliberately misbegotten, if not tragically disrespected bodies of artwork in history:Life loves irony. With the recent unveiling of Planet Zootopia, I've come to realize just how horrific a study in the virtues of chasing a dream can be... Years and years ago my brother (whose real name is Mark, not Markus) was a dirt-poor billboard painter with a scorching case of Crohn's disease. After a bit of prodding from Joni Mitchell he began drawing dogs-in-suits and, if not for a veritable truckload of unbelievable, mind-boggling good luck coming his way, today he might well be an unemployed, dirt-poor billboard painter with a scorching case of Crohn's disease. His dream-chasing was not so much a barefoot trek to the summit of Everest, it was more akin to a hunting safari in a zoo: He showed up in the right place and at the right time, all the while wielding an elephant gun of a work ethic that would make Thomas Hart Benton squeamish. I've been green with envy ever since. Indeed, it was my little brother who inspired me with his rocket-propelled ele - I mean, success; 'twas he who set the bar higher than I could have imagined possible - yet, just ten short years ago I was nothing if not ever-expectant regarding my own success, much like the little dodo in the Dreamsmyth. So much so that I could see myself rubbing my mental hands together in anticipation of the life I imagined; at last I had a thin thread of hope to cling to as I began chasing my own dream. In my experience, tracking that proverbial dream has been like sitting down with the irony gods in a game of thimblerig, and I'm still having a bloody lot of trouble keeping my eye on that damned ball. It's a hard lesson, learned with copious amounts of humility: you chase after your dream and hunt it down, capture it alive if you can, keep it shackled to the bedpost and feed it regularly. Then you wake up one morning minus a bedpost and you're back to square one. Life truly loves irony. By design, the dodos are the very essence of the yin and yang of this pursuit: live every day as if it were your last and live forever (as the dodo knows all too well); love without condition but be a slave to your passions; prudence is a lousy handmaiden, so throw yourself into the fray with wild abandon and let the chips fall where they may - in the end you will have few regrets because it is your own life that you've filled up with that dream, and the life you've made belongs solely to you. To quote Henry David Deaudeux:"Set sail in your dreamboat and live the life you've imagined!" As you could not help but notice, the scope of my work has broadened with the surprising discovery of Planet Zootopia - a discovery made possible by the stark realization that, with the fyshheads, I had painted myself right into that well-known corner... It happened late last year, not long after my father's timely death. While rewriting yet another chapter in the 'Mask of the Ancient Mariner' saga, a question arose: from whence did they all come? The original Fyshheads, that is. Upon what world, what planet, did they originate? Earth seemed too unimaginative an answer. But as I narrowed the field of possibilities, it dawned on me that if their planet of origin had been earthlike, what about that world's terrestrial inhabitants? I suddenly had a zoological epiphany: the Zooties were born! Now then, I neither subscribe to theories of predestination, nor do I condone notions of a preordained future that foretells events; I reserve a special brand of contempt for anything forecast by prophesy. I dismiss out of hand the presumption that each of us has some special calling or assignment in life, other than that of our own choosing, and I reject all superstitious beliefs, especially those rooted in the cults that have risen out of a fear of death. But I do embrace the possibility that each of us has the power to create the person we wish to be, that the only limitation imposed is the degree to which we exercise our own imagination and then act upon it:Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare. Confronted with the unhappy apprehension we feel when coming to terms with our own mortality, some of us are tempted by a selfish compulsion to extend our lives beyond the last act, to leave a little token of ourselves behind - something that tacitly proclaims, "I was here!" Poppycock and codswallop. To my last breathe, I will strive to illuminate the world by enlightening young minds, yanking the damned blinders off any credulous fool that swoons at the mere mention of a belief in the truth of supernaturalism, and I'll invite them all to join me as together we stand in awe of a life of our own making and the natural world in which it is inextricably embedded.Ars Gratia, Vita Brevis - art is long, life is short; time to get busy. But I digress. Set foot on Planet Zootopia and you're bound to take an anthropomorphic jaunt into the subconscious - a subtle yet thrilling, at times whimsical way of rejiggering one¿s sensibilities in order to see the world - and ourselves within it - in ways seldom imagined, that we may better understand why we are the way we are. The reason I draw, paint and sculpt, just as I write, compose and lecture, is to share with you some of the wonder I¿ve found, to uncover some of the mystery shrouded by the veil of primitive sentiments and to unmask the truth about who we are and where we¿re going. As for the dodo, I consider him to be the quintessence of sardonic bellwethers, but in unison, they're a whole flock of happily well-adapted (though still short of wing), reason-driven birds who occasionally fall prey to their own fatuous flights of fancy. Perhaps this is what endears them to us, for we see reflected in them a little of ourselves; pragmatic by day, footloose and fancy-free by night. The ideas embodied in these urbane folktales-married-to-art may not change your life, but perhaps you'll pause long enough to contemplate a good point or two and discover something you hadn't imagined till you suddenly found yourself facing down the beaky visage and matchless wit of an ordinary dodo. Irony notwithstanding, I should add that I believe Planet Zootopia will eventually find a place in the hearts and minds of all who seek it, and possibly those unwary enough to be taken in by surprise. Finally, I must confess to you that at the outset of the Mariner Series I had a grand vision for the Fyshheads: a concept for a CGI, feature-length, live action/animated film. Just a couple of years after I sold the first of what now amounts to hundreds of paintings sold, I began a spec script with the working title of Aquaria Rising, complete with storyboards and character sketches. This project has become yet another ball in that never-ending game of thimblerig, but it is a story that deserves to be told, and as such, I have reconfigured it in the form of an illustrated novel. It is by far the best thing I've ever done, my magnum opus, and I intend to see it through - to be a fool for it come what may, in true dromedarian style. For all of you to whom these presents may come, to my esteemed collectors, closest and dearest friends one and all, you are the reason I carry on, consumed with this elusive pursuit of a dream; without the continuing endorsement of my work through your generous benefaction, I might as well pack it in. So, thanks! With warm regards, Patrick Pierson I will be adding extra features over the next few months, so come back regularly. You can contact me on the ZOOTline: 561-707-3526 or 561-351-5781 Fyshwerks Studio Gallery is located at: 256 Tamoshanter Drive Palm Springs, FL 33461
(To read two excerpts from Patrick Pierson's forthcoming illustrated novel titled, Mask of the Ancient Mariner, click on the 'My Illustrated Novel' button on the upper right)
Use the link that follows (copy & paste it into your browser) to see Patrick Pierson's NEW zootopian listing at Artist's Registry:
You may also be interested in visiting MySpace, so just follow this link:
http://www.myspace.com/fyshwerks
or, if you'd like to sample a little FYSHMUSIK, try this link:
http://www.myspace.com/aquariaseries
and, if you'd like to join the fan club of Soarin' K. von Dodovogel, try this link:
http://www.myspace.com/planetzootopia
take 40% off the retail price on these two great matted prints: (just click on the SUBMARINER SERIES button) KINDRED LIONFISH - Special Edition: 13" by 26" (use the Buy Now button & promotional code 3526pier) THE SENTINELS - Special Edition: 13" by 26" (use the Buy Now button & promotional code 6736pier
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