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I’ve been showing these images to my friends, and reactions have been mixed. I think that’s great. One friend told me she’s up in the air about this series of paintings, and I said “so are the fish.” I like doing them, and I think they’d be very entertaining in a restaurant setting. You could count fish while you wait for your dinner.

More than ten years ago, I painted a map of Lake Superior on a restaurant wall. Whenever I go in there, I see people staring at it, and it makes me feel good.

I’ve often wondered if there was a way to get people to look at a painting longer than a few seconds. I do it, too. A lot of times, I only give art a quick glance. But I love it when something stops me in my tracks for longer than that. It may be something poignant, or whimsical. It may be something as simple as a color or a brush stroke. I never know what will appeal to another person. Nothing appeals to everyone. I’ve found that trying to paint something that “people will like” is a losing proposition. I’ve tried to express someone else’s vision for a painting before, and the results have been ugly. Both in the image and in the frustration of it all. I have to paint for me. If something is meaningful to me, perhaps it will strike a chord in someone else. Maybe you’ll love this. Maybe you’ll hate it. I’m happy with that.

Down in the Amazonian Flood Plain Forests, there are over a thousand species of trees that have adapted to freshwater flooding for up to 9 months out of the year.

During the high water phase, the water will rise up to 30 or 40 feet above the forest floor, and fish are able to feed on seeds from fruit bearing trees.