Fictional worlds by lucky fish

Funky Rabbits wallpaper elements (tablet)

2011-07-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

CD cover - ambient underwater sounds

2011-07-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

Self-portrait on a tree

2011-07-29T05:56:00.000-07:00

This world is full of things alive, departing from a general definition of a life form as an independent entity, which has a capacity to mutate over a finite life-span, in a response to a changing environment. A common phenomena of obsessive-compulsive disorder: touching inanimate objects to make sure they haven't come to life. Obsessive animification (made-up word, derived from anima: psychological mechanism of projecting spiritual onto matter in an attempt to explain it's changeability).
A few years ago I worked long hours on a virtual reality software; after, while walking home, I couldn't help touching railings, doors, vegetation - to enjoy the feeling of them being "more pleasantly real": unlike a VR glove, the "real" things did not vibrate.
In the middle of glass-and-concrete capital cities we are nevertheless surrounded by unsupervised mutation: birds, trees, insects; businesses that open, close, readjust. Faces coming through the random stains on the park benches... faces on the inhomogeneities of wooden decks. Reflections on reflections of reflections - caught through a window of a passing tram; patterns...

Beerlid tree

2011-07-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

Traveling Penises project

2011-07-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

Letter to Irish Times

2011-07-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

Sir,

On behalf of the organizers, participants and supporters of the pro-choice rally in Dublin we wish to express our concern over an unsatisfactory state of healthcare services available to women in Ireland.

Criminalization of abortion not only violates women's sexual and reproductive rights, it also continues Ireland's shameful history of state policy motivated by religious arguments, which violates the fundamental human right of Freedom of Religion, as well as contradicts the Irish Constitution which established freedom of (and from) religious belief (article 44).

We organized a counter-rally "Rally for Choice" at "Rally for Life" in order to demonstrate that the views of pro-life organizations do not represent the Irish public. There is wide support for safe and legal abortion on demand in Ireland (http://www.ifpa.ie/eng/Media-Info/News-Events/News-Events/Three-quarters-of-population-favour-liberalisation-of-abortion-laws-in-Ireland). 4,402 women living in Ireland accessed abortion services in UK in 2010 (UK Department of Health, http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsStatistics/DH_126769). Irish Medicines Board confirmed that the Irish Customs Authority seized 1,216 illegal abortion pills in 2009 (http://www.ifpa.ie/eng/Media/Files/Abortion-in-Ireland-Briefing) which provides evidence that women order medication online for a self-induced abortion.

Safe and legal abortion, in line with international standards, would reduce the levels of maternal mortality and injury related to unsafe abortion. When performed in a proper medical environment, abortion is among the safest procedures in medicine. In Ireland, however, women are still denied access to modern reproductive healthcare. Poor and very young women are particularly vulnerable, as for them it might be difficult to afford to travel abroad. As a consequence many have no other option but to go even as far as attempt self-induced abortions at home, which in some cases resulted in life-long disabilities and deaths.

It is deeply unsettling that in a modern European country the accessibility of healthcare services to women can still be dictated by theological arguments. "Rally for life" cynically pushed all their young supporters to the front of their march, so that the mainstream press would fail to get pictures of the dour clergymen, women waving rosary beads, virgin-Mary statues and crucifix-thrusting that characterised the majority of voting-age participants; "no to abortion, no to sodomy, no to Norris", read one proudly-held sign. In addition to those religiously motivated participants, "Rally for life" cynically used children, who have no understanding of the issues involved, for PR purposes.

"Rally for life" had tens of thousands of euro at its disposal, and bussed its participants in from all over the country. We, on the other hand, were a handful of Dubliners who organised our demonstration at the last minute. This group of approximately 200 of us endured with dignity the slanders and threats from the large pro-life rally. Contrary to assertions from previous letter writers, we did not choose to respond in kind to these aggressive provocations. The gardai deserve praise for protecting the safety of the pro-choice group in very antagonistic circumstances.

We demand a review of the abortion policy and legislation for the X case as a matter of urgency.

Yours,
....

Extraordinary Adventures of Massimo Benis.

2011-03-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

Page 1. (Let me tell u my story...)

Page 2 (Massimo's Trip)

Page 3. (Challenging and exciting)

Page 3.(Death in the office)

Mr. Hardwork is referenced in this post

Page 4. (Moving For Ward)

More about Freddie Twitchingeye...
(to be continued...)

Distribution of Corporate Power

2011-03-15T06:40:00.001-07:00

Adventures of Mr. Hardwork - comic strip

2011-02-27T13:15:00.000-08:00

Teamplayers

2011-02-27T13:11:00.000-08:00

Buzzworderie strongly prioritizes
our fantastic, unilateral goals, moving forward!
Bullshitological suspension of the possible:
cutting edges of exciting technologies.
Passion! Passion!

Intuos 4 - Tablet drawings

2011-01-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

Adventures of Mr Twitchingeye, technical manager

2010-12-21T13:20:00.000-08:00

Click on the pictures if you would like to full-view them :)

1. Mr. Twitchingeye discovers superpowers

2. Mr. Twitchingeye has a dream

Will you be my friend?

2010-12-12T06:06:00.000-08:00

Christmas (and other) card designs

2010-11-21T06:10:00.000-08:00

Cards are made with Adobe Illustrator.

Flowercard: it's not very Christmas, but it is spiritual..

Some fantasy too...

Symphony No. 4 in E minor by Johannes Brahms

2010-10-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

This is my entry for Tinderbox Heartstrings project, inspired by Symphony No. 4 in E minor by Johannes Brahms. The quoted line is the first few bars of the second movement.

The picture illustrates emotional development of a musical composition: starting with dark somber notes of miserable office workers going to their crammed workplaces on a dark morning, developing into repetitive routine of greed and buzzwords.... then gradually changing into light birds floating among the currents of wind.
Of course such is only one personal interpretation of the symphony written by Brahms in 1885, I love listening to this piece!

Birds.

2010-06-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

Pen in moleskin (sold.)

Travel memories

2010-06-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

I did this one already a wile ago, and now I found it!

( pencils and pen on paper... text is too small to read :) )

Happiness is transitory, happiness is un-analyzed; Happiness is being a stranger in one's own city; happiness is buying an ice-cream of a new brand even while it is raining. Happiness is observing ants travel across a map to fictional places, with long names written in calligraphic font; in certain languages there is a link between "leisure" and "infinity".

Magic Tree (work in progress)

2010-04-26T14:06:00.000-07:00

This is a design which I'm currently working on for The Picture Works art competition. Details here: http://tinderboxnetwork.blogspot.com/2010/03/picture-works-art-competition.html

Watercolor + pencil under painting + photoshop + real tree from St. Anne's park.

Picture works didn't want it, they were looking for a different style...

Blue Tree

2010-04-24T09:08:00.000-07:00

Colored pencils + pastel.

My Card!

2010-04-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

Above is my winning entry for the recent Rothar competition. The card has been distributed around various locations in Dublin.

Skipping school

2010-03-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like a day when we don't owe anything to any "social institution". A day snitched from concerns about the future, from competition with other humans.

Forest life - in a moleskin

2010-03-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

This little composition is inspired by Totoro, a character by Hayao Miyazaki. I have seen this cartoon a few times and still like it!!

Lo-Fi - Sparkling Light

2010-03-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

Pictures taken with an iPhone in Ranelagh Gardens last weekend. *No* processing. Toy cameras are magic devices!

Neglected haircut

2010-02-17T14:06:00.000-08:00

This one is a development of this , and this.

Bike Cemetary

2010-02-14T06:31:00.000-08:00

A bicycle, unlike a person, after its death does not become excluded from material existence, but on the contrary, liberated from the realms of practical purpose it is for that matter elevated into the spheres of spiritual, sort of like a free sculpture.

This image (with a different description) is my entry for me and my rothar competition.

Previous versions of the same theme are in older posts in this blog: bike

and work-in-progress

Poison

2010-02-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

Greyscale things - a view into a park

2010-02-10T15:34:00.000-08:00

The things I tell you...

2010-02-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

Here is a less contrast version

The things I tell you...

wing of a moth, revealing a map of fields,

a dew drop, curved precisely, like a mosque dome -

everyday life of microscopic worlds

is inhabited with even smaller things.

About a girl who was lost in the rain

2010-02-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

The was a schoolgirl who wanted to be pretty more then anything in the world. One day she put on her most beautiful summer dress and dark sunglasses and went out to buy some sweets, but it was raining so hard and was so dark outside that she could not find her way and was lost. Perhaps she was blown off into the ocean...

...greyscale things

2010-02-04T11:20:00.000-08:00

Too bad I'm too old to read Vogue and ELLE. I used to like them, it seems, only some few years ago...

From the Arabian Nights

2010-01-24T12:42:00.000-08:00

There was a man, who has married a poor girl on an impulse once he learned she is in love with him. Later he discovered that his young wife had secrets, as it would happen if one becomes close before knowing anything about each other. She had lots of different secrets. For example, she could curse people to become animals. But she could do even more - she could fly.

No longer had the lucky guy pay his train fare..!

Surreal landscape with red sicillian oranges

2010-01-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

Flying watchmaker

2009-11-17T00:53:00.000-08:00

Once there was a very ordinary man, a watchmaker, who, on his has 29th birthday has discovered that he had an ability to fly. He didn't become a Batman or anything like that because a town in which he lived was a very quiet and peaceful one. Nothing ever happened in there. At nights lights went off in the houses, people went to sleep, and there weren't any sounds but those of the night insects and electric cracking of the street lights.

New banner!

2009-11-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

The new banner that now appears on this blog is based on a view from my window.
I made it look friendlier then it is in reality - during this part of the year it is all dark, windy and cold. I'm so tired of this window, I'm tired of this house... I want to be somewhere warm.

The bike - a fragment..

2009-10-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

Another drawing of the Howth bike, I used a fragment of this to design a website banner.

So, this weekend we went to Howth to draw the bike. Although it was a nice day in the morning, once we got to Howth it started raining from all directions. The bike had to be photographed and with some success drawn from those few (dark and miserable) photographs.

It was fun nevertheless: we saw a dolphin several times, one mushroom, rainbow (four times, in different parts of the sky), numerous drunk Norwegian sailors, and six lazy seals with incredibly intelligent human expressions coming really close to people.

Broken Dreams (work in progress)

2009-10-19T16:36:00.000-07:00

Collage, ink pen, pencils. Anyway, here is the first draft. I found this very old rusty bike in Howth where it has probably been for many years, in the same condition. I hope to come back and draw it again if it does not rain.

Probably it has a story of it's own, a story about someone's dream being abandoned, a story of demolished properties, stray squirrels jumping out on the road, and fences with inevitable holes. ...

Three Irises

2009-10-18T03:05:00.000-07:00

Acrylic and stuff on canvas. Fragment:

Three irises next to a red wall.

Woman and her cat

2009-10-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

This is a drawing about relationships between a woman and a cat.

Women think.

Men think.

Dogs think.

Flies think.

The cat does not think.

The cat knows. Everything.

Ink and pastel. Please click on the image if you would like to see it, the quality is much deteriorated when sized down.

Angel

2009-10-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

I have copied this girl from someone's life-drawing (http://ciaransart.blogspot.com/2009/10/life-drawing-6thoct09.html) because I liked the deliberate distortion of her body which makes her inhuman, ethereal, weightless, alien - which connects with her real name - Angel. The drawing which was my reference had a fold on top looking like a South American hat, which suited her image perfectly. Only after the drawing was finished I have noticed it was only a fold.

A naked women in a hat is an old concept in art. A girl who liked to wear her granddad's hat (her only memory of him) while meeting her lover is described by Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I am sure there are more examples because of high energy of this image - giving an otherwise feminine character an accessory of a man - which makes her in a way complete and brings in an intriguing hint that the man is perhaps at this time looking at this women who is being intimate with his personal belongings.

The sheep who wanted to fly (sold)

2009-10-12T04:37:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there lived a sheep who wanted to fly... and then it did. It has became a sheep who can fly. Now it can raise above the clouds into bright ambient sunlight and possibly go anywhere. It does not know how it flies. I do not know where does it want to go.

Pine forest in spring

2009-10-11T08:07:00.000-07:00

Perhaps if everyone started making drawings like this in September (especially hippies, people with attention disorders, and other naive guys and girls with superior level of innocence) then we could reverse backwards and skip autumn and winter, so that there would be only spring and summer.

Summer Night

2009-10-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

Made with colored pencils. This could be a sketch for women's shawl or dress design.

Ascension - Imaginaryroom Wallpaper

2009-09-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Printing, acrylics, watercolor, washing liquid and other chemicals.

One of the higher purposes of art is to achieve a melange of incomprehensible. This way an object of art abandons the reality of paint, paper, limited dimensions and meaningful depiction, and transitions into existence of a different quality where is does not define, but creates a universe of it's own. A universe of unclear probability and own physical laws. Anything is possible.

Tropical trees

2009-09-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

This is a summer drawing inspired by travels in Turkey. Had it lying in my desk for a few month... now that it is getting cold and gloomy it seems a right time to put it up.

Frida-inspired

2009-09-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

Being ill is like being in jail, except, unless one firmly believes in karma, it is not clear what is this for. Being ill is like going to jail for no reason.

Dublin park view

2009-09-13T03:05:00.000-07:00

chalk pastel, mixed media

Wonderland Symphony

2009-09-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

Come, o stranger, enter this sinister wonder-land!
Take a drink from the fountain -
privilege for members of The Lodge -
blood of innocent infants flavored with star anise.
During the quietest days it rains.
At noon, Dr. Rabbit, professor of all the occult studies,
is giving lecture on immortality.

Blimp, the explorer

2009-09-09T12:32:00.001-07:00

This is dedicated to my favorite iPhone game, Blimp. I love it very much, even though I still can not pass the last level.

Invasion

2009-09-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

Ink pen drawing from this weekend. Click on the image to see full view, it appears smallish on the blog.

If...

2009-08-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

...if we disappear the world might continue as it is. If one day (just like in a sci-fi story) there were no people, the cities might continue to exist just as they are. All the empty starbuckses, independent of human presence. Abandoned cars and traffic cones, flaky clouds scrolling by like a video, electric street lights switching on and off automatically with dark and dawn

Winter view

2009-07-26T09:58:00.000-07:00

0.5 mm pencil on paper

It is not winter now, but I was very ill when I did this and feeling as if it was winter - alienated from the world which living it's life outside the window.

Air Madagascar

2009-07-26T03:56:00.000-07:00

Ink on paper.

Old-movie girl

2009-07-26T03:25:00.000-07:00

The Believer

2009-07-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

A true believer has wine, but he has no snack he could drink it with. He prays to God in his despair and gets some pretty good prickled herring (heaven style) sent to him from the sky.

0,5 mm pencil... inspired by El Greco

Therapy for depression

2009-06-30T12:35:00.001-07:00

If one is depressed... Little blue pills made of blue sky-light will make forget everything.

Colored pencil and ink on white paper.

Pencil Drawing...

2009-06-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

Well, ... Just felt like uploading something.

0.5mm pencil on white paper

The Winter Garden

2009-05-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

The brown girl says: Summer will come, my dear.

Colored pencils and ink on white paper.

TV Generation

2009-05-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

They have watched lots of TV until they grew up into little TVs.

White acrylic on red paper. (The free red paper from Hugh Lane.)

The Key

2009-05-07T01:02:00.000-07:00

Watercolor pencils.

The key opens a secret place. A place which requires ssh and asymmetric encryption, a place which is well known to everyone but appears too small to have an entrance.

Aero Plum

2009-05-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

A flying plum infused with helium lets people fly when they are awake with the same efficiency as if they were asleep.

Colored pencils and ink.

Among the grass

2009-04-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

... the world of little creatures inhabiting the woods of grass, too small for people to see.

Colored pencils.

Encounters

2009-04-13T04:52:00.001-07:00

Encounters of the night... what are you doing in my dream?

Finding Fairyland

2009-04-08T00:55:00.000-07:00

Colored pencil and ink in white paper sketchpad.

If I didn't have to cut my hair... 2

2009-04-05T06:08:00.000-07:00

If I didn't have to cut my hair...

2009-03-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

If I never had to cut my hair it would keep growing. When it no longer fits in the house it would climb through the windows, grow along the streets, dip itself into the ocean and start consuming seaweed which is very good and has a lot of nutrition, climb from a building to building...

The Symphony

2009-03-03T01:33:00.000-08:00

Dialogue

2009-02-28T10:37:00.000-08:00

Admirer

2009-02-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

External Life

2009-02-07T07:28:00.000-08:00

Love

2009-01-31T05:38:00.001-08:00

Two Lovers (sold)

2009-01-07T08:11:00.000-08:00

This painting was exhibited in gallery Sol in June 2010, was sold a year later in July 2011.

December

2009-01-07T06:34:00.000-08:00

City Of Towers

2008-11-29T03:44:00.000-08:00

Acrylic on canvas. This painting belongs to my neighbours.

Blue Girl

2008-11-29T03:43:00.000-08:00

Red Balloon

2008-11-22T03:07:00.000-08:00

An art class

2008-11-22T03:04:00.000-08:00