Loomings
Loomings is a series of paintings combining tar, oil paint, and occasionally gold leaf. Named after the first chapter in Melville’s Moby-Dick, each painting’s title references the novel’s sense of the “inscrutable” and Melville’s apocalyptic vision of the American quest.
The tar, a fossil-fuel byproduct, functions as a monochromatic signifier of industrialism, particularly reckless over-extraction. Recalling that whale oil was the precursor to petroleum, the titles’ quotations from Moby-Dick and the tar’s metallic blacks and tintype sepia tones invoke Melville’s novel as a cautionary, foundational myth for our own age of accelerating climate disruption and social discord.
PAINTING AT THE SPOUTER INN ("Purposing to spring clean over the craft")
ANY HUMAN THING #4 (The Whaler as Derrick)
WESTWARD #1
ASCENSION
TRYING OUT ("The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed.")
THE SPIRIT SPOUT
CAPTAIN'S WATCH
WESTWARD #3
THE ENDLESS ROLLING OF A MILKY SEA
SLEEK ("That calm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion.")
HORIZON SAILS
WESTWARD #2
WATERSPOUT
SOU'WESTER
SURELY ALL THIS MUST NOT BE WITHOUT MEANING
DISTRESSED WHALER WITH WATERSPOUTS
ANY HUMAN THING ("I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.")
ROUGH WEATHER
T'GALLANT SAILS
CORPUS SANCTI ("Look aloft! cried Starbuck. 'The St Elmos Lights (corpus sancti), the corposants! the corposants! '... each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.")
DIVE ("Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked from the skies and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!")
TWINS ("Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the … bond entailed")
DIVE #6
ARGONAUTICA/DUTCHMAN ("Yes the world's a ship on her passage out.")
FLUKES
WESTWARD #14
ALTERNATIVE FACTS (Faux Tintypes)
TRUE PLACES ("It is not down on any map, true places never are.")
BREAK, BREAK
VORTEX
BURNING WHALER
TRUE PLACES #2 (It is not down on any map, true places never are.")
OF GRIEFS BENEATH THE MOON
WESTWARD #4
ANY HUMAN THING #5 ("I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.")
CABINET
CALL ME ISHMAEL
DESCARTIAN VORTICES
TOWARD THEE I ROLL
WESTARD #6
NOR'EASTER #4
LOOMINGS - THE BOOK
Part personal essay, part high-quality images, part philosophy of art, this slim volume does more than beautifully document the series. It’s a creative work in its own right, pairing the paintings with passages from Moby-Dick that expand upon the hints and suggestions embedded in the works’ titles and its imagery.
48-page trade paperback (8” x 6”), containing high-quality reproductions and two original essays.
$23 + $5 shipping
