This otter, poking around on some abstract beach somewhere, is one of my favourites of my most recent stuff. The pastel colours are lovely and the whole splashy-crashy, washed-around scene works so nicely as a clean place of foamy sand and stranded kelp. A great place for an otter, and a great place for the rest of us to enjoy getting lost in. But at the same time understated and subtle.
And I found it on a near-delapidated corrugated fence that was shedding paint as though riddled with a virulent skin disease. It was about twenty kilometres from the nearest coast in the middle of a provincial town and on the face of it bore absolutely no resemblance to wild beauty. And yet, if I got close enough and squinted hard enough I could see nature at work as its weathering hand etched its way through the paint and metal.
There may not be a purpose behind this weathering but the endpoint is clearly total reclamation of our efforts to produce simple, bland surfaces that are practical but hold no interest. Except it rarely reaches that end as we will rip the fence down and exert our control again by replacing it with a new one of garishly plain colours and perhaps, for a while, glossy. Our aesthetic sense in public places feels too superficial to me. I know a fence is not there to be admired just to be part of the background as a boundary and barrier but if it does hold worlds of wonder like these why not value it? Instead of loathe and try to ignore it.
Here is the photograph I used to make this artwork without the otter and rotated to its orientation as it is on the fence.
And a close-up detail to help you see the richness in its patterned textures. I always find it amazing how there can be such wonderful variety within something so mundane. Great beauty but culturally invisible.
I found this beach about half way along this fence in front of the blue telegraph pole.
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