From the Water to Inspiration

When someone asks me to paint their fish, they always begin the same way: with an apology. 'I know this is a strange request,' they say. 'I know it's just a fish.'

It is never just a fish.

By the time they've finished telling me about it, the river, the morning, who they were with, what the light was doing, I understand that what they're really asking me to paint is a moment. A particular arrangement of water and light and feeling that they are afraid of losing.

That is not a strange request. That is the only request worth making.

Idaho holds a special place in my memories. Two great friends — Dave Baldiga and Steve Neilsen — had moved from Dayton to Boise in search of an outdoor-centered life. Boise had the tech industry to support the move, and that relocation opened the door to some of the finest adventures I've ever had. They introduced me to their colorful friend Kron, and the four of us became the core of something that grew from there. Heavy D, Winston, and Pork Chop joined us from time to time, each one adding their own character to the mix.

One of our early adventures took us to Badger Creek, deep in the Sawtooth Range. We hiked the river basins up to the alpine lakes — peaks, drainage basins, and long dirt roads that led somewhere worth going. The kind of country that earns every step. We often ended those backpacking trips in Ketchum and Sun Valley, where the pace slowed and the scenery didn't. Occasionally we'd cross paths with Demi Moore or James Caan, both of whom had places in the area.

A standing ritual was stopping at the hatchery on the Salmon River to check the fish counts — sockeye or steelhead, depending on the season. Stanley served as our launch point for many of those trips. We'd take the water taxi from the Redfish Lake Lodge to the trailhead and disappear into the mountains from there.

The memories made on those trails are the kind that don't fade. Neither do the friendships.

Fish on.

I met friend and fishing buddy Doug Ford in Dayton, Ohio through our sons who played soccer together. Doug loved to fish so we started venturing out around the Dayton region. As we continued our adventures we took our boys to Cherokee, North Carolina and fished the trophy water section of Ravens Fork, which yielded a great day on the water.

Doug later moved to Midland, Michigan, which changed our fishing adventures to the rivers of Michigan. One of our first early evening adventures we fished the Cedar River where we experienced a Hex hatch that looked like a summer blizzard. We often headed to the Pere Marquette River for Steelhead, Salmon, and Browns.

The picture on the left is a float trip down the Pere Marquette with Doug's Uncle Jac. Fishing with Jac was always a colorful adventure. Early on the water to make sure we were first to the best gravel beds. A great teacher, chef with the hot shore lunches, and always knowing how to get a fish on your line. Over the years Jac has become a friend, and always a call for working the redds during the King spawn, chasing Steelhead, stripping streamers for the record Brown, or a late-night mousing adventure. Jac and Doug have made the Michigan adventures memorable for us and our sons.

Fish on.

My first large-format commission came from Nelson Stark, a company whose logo is the American Buffalo. When they approached me, I understood immediately why the tarpon made sense to them.

Both animals carry the same weight. The buffalo, a symbol of the American landscape, of endurance and wildness and something that almost disappeared and didn't. The tarpon, a fish that has been swimming in these waters for millions of years, unchanged, uncatchable on its own terms. You don't land a tarpon so much as it allows you to hold it for a moment before it goes back to being what it is.

The blue in this piece is a variation on the tarpon's natural coloration, that blue-gray and green of open water, the color of something moving fast just below the surface. I pulled it toward Nelson Stark's corporate palette so the fish belongs to the space, not just hangs in it. The color ties the work to the company without losing what the fish is.

This was the piece that taught me what large-format work could do. When you give a fish eight feet of wall, it stops being a painting and starts being a presence. People walk into that office and they feel it before they see it.

Fish on.

When Sam Brown commissioned this piece, he didn't ask for a fish on a wall. He asked for a memory, the memory of standing in an Alaskan river with his family when the sockeye were running.

Ten panels. Each one sized to a fish from that trip, his actual catch. Set at various depths across the wall, the way a school moves through current, not in a straight line but in that loose, shifting formation that looks random until you watch it long enough to see the order underneath.

The sockeye salmon is unlike any other fish I've painted. In the ocean they are silver and unremarkable, easy to overlook. But when they enter fresh water to spawn, something extraordinary happens. The body turns deep crimson. The head goes green. The males develop that distinctive hooked jaw and a humped back that makes them look prehistoric. They become something else entirely.

I know that transformation from my own time on Alaskan rivers. The moment the fish change, the river changes with them. The whole valley feels different. There is an urgency in the water that you carry home with you.

The overall work spans eight feet by four feet and carries an integrated story alongside the panels, Sam's Alaskan adventure woven together with my own salmon fishing memories. His clients stop in front of it every time. They ask about it. That's the thing about a fish that has made that journey, from the open ocean to the headwaters of a river, through every obstacle the world puts in front of it. There's something in that story that people recognize, even if they've never held a fly rod in their lives.

Fish on.