Many, many of my paintings have come from the first chapter of Moby Dick.
The thing about Moby Dick is that, at heart, it's a very simple plot - there's only one white whale in the ocean. When you're a boy growing up in a hostile home, you imagine it's unique: it's happening only to you.
'Baltimore' the series is inspired by all kinds of things, from 'Moby Dick' to 'Dracula.'
I have a tattoo on my foot that says 'it's a whale' in Japanese, because Japanese people kill whales. My stuffed whale was like most children's teddy bear. I took it with me everywhere. I slept with it. I couldn't live without my whale.
I've never been one for religion, but yet I've never been what ye could call an unbeliever. What I say is, nothin' don't seem impossible once you've clapped eyes on a whale.
They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.
Seated upon the convex mound Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays And sings his canticles and hymns, Making the hollow vault resound God's goodness and mysterious ways, Till the great fish spouts music as he swims.
Whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the sea great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies. And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-tender young and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.
