I finished a year of drawing octopuses every day... and kept going.
If ever there was an animal that could be conceived of as having dreamed itself into existence, it would be the octopus. Nearly all axes of their being are for all intents and purposes impossible for humans to imagine – from their radial symmetry, their multitude of independently-controlled suckers that touch as well as taste their surroundings, their complex but non-centralized nervous systems, to the horizontal slit of their eyes. That sense of radical self-invention that octopuses bonelessly embody is an element crucial to my work. Because of their inherent amorphousness, octopuses can be represented in an infinite number of ways and offer an ideal conduit to represent the intangible.
Inspired by the many recent daily projects undertaken by artists, writers and other creators, I embarked upon my An Octopus a Day project in October of 2010. Over the course of the 700+ pieces I have drawn, painted, embossed, cut and folded since then, I have found the beautifully nebulous and alien form of the octopus to be an ideal vehicle to explore line, texture, color, light, and dark. Their ever-shifting indefinite silhouettes have allowed for endless abstraction and exploration using a wide variety of media - from pen and ink to watercolors, gouache, charcoal, mixed media, embossing powder, magnetic paint, and my personal favorite - squid ink. I hope my paintings and drawings are able to echo some fraction of the wonder that octopuses evoke in their otherworldly splendor.
The overwhelming and wonderful response to my Octopus a Day project on tumblr, twitter and facebook inspired me to open my Etsy shop in 2012. Five percent of all my sales are donated to Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures project to support their efforts in preserving our oceans and their inhabitants.
