“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure.They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
“There was a fish in the percolator!”
Pete Martell, Twin Peaks
On January 15, 2025 the world lost a creative powerhouse in artist David Lynch. Since then, I’ve been reflecting on Lynch’s influence on me. I was introduced to David Lynch through the enigmatic Eraserhead moving onto Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Blue Velvet, and Twin Peaks.
Although I have not seen his full repertoire, these movies left a deep impression on me and my creative expression. The strange, dreamy quality of his films, with their undercurrents of humour and fear, had a transcendental spiritual quality but were also fully and wholly human. I think Lynch reached deep inside the complexity of the human psyche, with all its contradictions and confusions.
Fish in the Percolator- 2025
Mixed Media
I felt a need to create a piece of art, particularly in response to Lynch’s quote, “ideas are like fish” and the Twin Peaks line, “a fish in the percolator!” I was drawn to the symbolism of the fish, within the context of Lynch. These fish as creative ideas swimming around our consciousness, and once reached can be thrust upon the world in physical/spiritual/emotional form. Thus I created an image of agent Jeffries, who has taken the form of a large percolator. The fish swim around in the inky background, waiting to be caught.
I have a recurrent dream, one where I realize suddenly that I have an aquarium full of fish that I have somehow forgotten about. I search for the fish and when I find them, they are all dead, floating in the grimy water of the forgotten aquarium. In reflection, I can interpret the fish as representative of my creativity and the loss of them when I “forget” that part of myself. In one of my art therapy practices, I painted these dead fish and then, later, affixed a new image on top. These new fish were bright and colourful and the water was blue and flowing.
It is easy to let the stresses of life overwhelm oneself and lose sight of that creative spark. This exercise was a reminder to myself to nourish my ideas, allow them to swim in healthy flowing water, and percolate.
