Captartbook is an artist of great talent and detail. Not much is Googleable about Captartbook. On their Instagram page they exclaim on their two passions, sailing and drawing. Captartbook’s social media sticks strictly to the drawing (unless you dive deep, discover a few pictures of a boat) and so we are left only with their art.
Other than the mystery, it’s the art which draws one to Captartbook’s output. Their approach to art eschews the current popularity of minimalism, favoring a deeply labored level of detail that punches you in the gut upon first glance. Many of their pieces are uncolored works of ink or pencil. Captartbook’s choices of subject and stylistic quirks evoke an evolution of drawings you sometimes find in paperback copies of classic novels. Their most recent post at the time of this writing features a pirate-looking, grizzled man with a big gray beard and a monkey hanging off the side of his head. It’s a portrait done in ink, using classic technique on a subject of days gone by. Presenting this in 2019, Captartbook updates the classic idea in a more sinister way. The eyes of the monkey are black almond shaped holes, unlike the man’s who has whites and intent drawn in, accusing/threatening, it’s a choice. There’s a void in the eyes of the simian friend and the artist has captioned the piece with, “Who is the real owner?” It feels of another time and provocative at the same time by way of the artist. They compel you to reconsider things in a new way. Take the next post even. An ink drawing of Atrani, Italy. It’s another display of technical mastery on the part of Captartbook, rendering an old European Coastal town. A place we typically think of as being sunny and gorgeous now takes on an underlying darkness in its beauty. It’s still gorgeous but now also feels like it could stand in for the setting of Dracula. All of Captartbook’s work takes on this sort of feel; classic, beautiful and dark. It’s part of their mystery, one I intend to watch unfold through the only path available to us. Their art!