#2. Shoal (aka "Fishy business")
The giclee print for sale on the site called “Shoal” was published in an article titled “Fishy business; the mystery of the missing minnows”.
The version of “Shoal” on sale on the site differs from the painting that was used to illustrate the article it was commissioned for. As you can see for yourself to the left, the original included a male swimmer standing in the mid-ground and a fish swimming out of frame in the foreground, neither of which appear in the version on this site (version one doesn’t have as many fish either). Most people who commented on the painting usually said they just liked the fish, so I thought I would see what a version without the man would look like.
In this weeks issue the writer announce that he has a new obsession- he has immersed himself in the world of tropical fish keeping! He admits he has become a bit of a geek in this regard, confessing he has read up on the latest methods of reducing the water’s PH level and the merits of injecting carbon dioxide into the water when he mentions that he, somewhat naively, was surprised that his previously docile and placid cats were transformed by the arrival of the fish. He candidly compares their possession by base animal hunting instincts to those of a sexual bent that took hold of him the year before. After a couple of paragraphs describing the antics of cat / fish interaction and his need to appeases nurturing instincts due to the absence of children in his life, the article takes on a serious and sombre note where he questions the sentimental attitude we have towards animals, as a nation empties their pockets for Rolf Harris and his ilk while children’s care homes are being shut down all over the country due to lack of funds.
Picking up on a point I raised in the piece I wrote about the painting “Feather” the design of “Shoal” references imagery from my visual memory bank (which isn’t really surprising I suppose since to make sense of, or relate to anything in life we automatically compare and contrast to similar previous experiences). I remembered a photograph I cut out and kept from a magazine of a man standing in one of those walk through aquariums and thought I could do something with it. One of the reasons I kept it was because of the contrast between the man’s red t-shirt and the aqua blue-green of the background but I can only find a black and white photocopy of it now which I have included here.
I kept tropical fish too in my early teens. I first batch of fish I bought were colourful and all had elaborate fins, Guppies and Angel fish. After a while I bought a second batch, a small shoal of strikingly orange a black Tiger barbs (or barps, I can’t remember). They were impressive, spending the whole day swimming at speed, in tight formation, from one end of the tank to the other. The only problem was that when I woke the morning after placing them in the tank all the other fish with their elaborate fins were flapping and bobbing up and down on the bottom of the tank minus their elaborate fins! Anyway, although they haven't ended up looking like them, the fish in “Shoal” were inspired by the Tiger barbs.
The other image that came to me when painting “Shoal” was a self portrait drawing from a couple of years previously (a detail of which can be seen to the left). In it I liked the glint of light caught on the lens of the spectacles, and so replicated the idea on the swimmers goggles.
In retrospect I think the original illustration would have been a stronger painting without the fish swimming towards the viewer. I liked the idea of playing with space by having one of the fish swim in front of the man’s cocked arm when it should really be swimming behind, and I think I got carried away with that notion by adding the fish in the foreground. It should have been swimming off to the left like all the others but perhaps with its tailfin in front of the man’s stomach?
By the way, you may be wondering why I bothered to include the man in the original painting at all? Well, when I received the copy from the Art director it included a paragraph where the writer mentions that he has taken up swimming again as a result of looking at his fish. He deleted this from the final copy that went to print!
