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7x5" Mixed Media on Paper
"Fishbone Alley" A weary, working-class figure strides forward in profile — flat cap, mustache, hunched shoulders in a loose gray jacket, blue jeans, sneakers, one hand tucked in a pocket, the other trailing what looks like a length of rope or fishing line. He seems unaware of the enormous octopus riding his back like a rucksack.
The octopus dominates the composition: an old duffel bag, from which coral-pink and violet tentacles spill outward in loose coils, their undersides studded with pale suckers. One long arm curls down and to the right, ending in a hooked grip on a small, cheerfully patterned fish dangling in mid-air — as if the creature is fishing over the man's shoulder while he walks. A single visible eye peers out from the mass of limbs, giving the creature a knowing, almost mischievous expression despite its monstrous scale.
Two motifs anchor the surrounding space: Thomas's recurring spiral sun, rendered here in warm orange and pink, floats free in the lower right — and along the ground, a loose scatter of inked fish skeletons and bones forms an informal border, giving the piece its title and suggesting a landscape littered with the octopus's past meals (or the man's catch, long since picked clean).
The palette leans warm and earthy — ochre background wash, denim blues, and the octopus's coral-and-olive coloring — with the ink linework doing most of the structural work, watercolor filling in loose, expressive blocks of color rather than tight rendering. The tone sits somewhere between whimsical and uncanny: a burden literalized as a sea creature, quietly along for the ride.
7x5" Mixed Media on Paper
"Fishbone Alley" A weary, working-class figure strides forward in profile — flat cap, mustache, hunched shoulders in a loose gray jacket, blue jeans, sneakers, one hand tucked in a pocket, the other trailing what looks like a length of rope or fishing line. He seems unaware of the enormous octopus riding his back like a rucksack.
The octopus dominates the composition: an old duffel bag, from which coral-pink and violet tentacles spill outward in loose coils, their undersides studded with pale suckers. One long arm curls down and to the right, ending in a hooked grip on a small, cheerfully patterned fish dangling in mid-air — as if the creature is fishing over the man's shoulder while he walks. A single visible eye peers out from the mass of limbs, giving the creature a knowing, almost mischievous expression despite its monstrous scale.
Two motifs anchor the surrounding space: Thomas's recurring spiral sun, rendered here in warm orange and pink, floats free in the lower right — and along the ground, a loose scatter of inked fish skeletons and bones forms an informal border, giving the piece its title and suggesting a landscape littered with the octopus's past meals (or the man's catch, long since picked clean).
The palette leans warm and earthy — ochre background wash, denim blues, and the octopus's coral-and-olive coloring — with the ink linework doing most of the structural work, watercolor filling in loose, expressive blocks of color rather than tight rendering. The tone sits somewhere between whimsical and uncanny: a burden literalized as a sea creature, quietly along for the ride.