INTRODUCTION

UNDERWATER WITH COARSE FISH

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ORIGINAL ART FOR SALE

Left to indulge myself I could probably paint pike forever.  Of all the fish that lived long in my imagination and then overwhelmed me in reality the pike is my favourite.  To my shame now, I killed the first pike I caught: I simply couldn't bare to return it , wanting to show everybody, and to somehow extend the experience by keeping it for as long as possible. I cooked the body, baking it with onions, and much to my Mum's horror, I boiled the head in one of her saucepans trying to liberate the masterpiece skull'.  This partly worked and I put what remained on top of the shed roof to dry in the sun only for it to be purloined by the family tabby.  I searched high and low but never found it and it bothers me to this day that I don't have that pike skull.

The carp paintings that I do now are as much a result of revisiting my youthful imagination as they are of direct observation.  The hours and hours spent carp fishing would be filled with thoughts of carp, invariably monsters moving beneath the surface, and my paintings are an attempt to convert these mental images into paint.  I do a lot of research for my carp pictures, diving southern gravel pits in search of fish, taking underwater photographs of both fish and their habitat,  and visiting aquariums.  So far my diving with carp has been a little disappointing as quite often suitable waters have a hint of colour which reduces the visibility and results in the fish seen appearing somewhat ghostly.  They are undoubtedly curious about my presence though and I have had some good `twenties' investigate me before ghosting away. I hope that I have at least partly met with the imaginations of other anglers through these paintings, and while sat waiting for a run their minds are filled with pictures of great fish moving into the baited area, one of which will make a mistake and send the indicator flying.

I was delighted when I was learning to dive to discover shoals of perch amongst the divers `props' introduced to Stoney Cove in Leicestershire.  In the aircraft cockpit I have seen big perch asleep, completely immobile and oblivious to the succession of clumsy novices trailing through their home.  There were also perch to be found by the `Nautilus', a sunken mini submarine, usually smaller ones gathered around the subs propellers. The best numbers of perch I have seen were in Bosherston Lily Pools in Pembrokeshire. Here I have seen a shoal so dense that it was almost impossible to see where it started or finished, all eyes of these hundreds of 6 inch perch turned in my direction. At the other extreme I have often come across big solitary perch, often pale and battle-scarred, hiding amongst sunken trees, obviously the sole survivor of a similar tremendous shoal.

Most of my tench paintings have been set amongst lilies as the fish and the plant are almost inseparable in my imagination : I cannot look at the edge of a  lily bed without envisaging a perfectly cocked quill (red-topped, of course) with a lobworm or a couple of grains of sweetcorn laid on beneath. My first tench was caught on a worm beneath a float, from Tanners Dam, and ranks highly amongst any of my boyhood angling triumphs.  The intended quarry, as ever, were small perch, and the float's disappearance suggested another 2oz stripey, but the strike met with a heavier, altogether more stubborn resistance. I felt sick with apprehension as I fumbled with the clutch on my Intrepid Black Prince.  I remember pleading with the Fishing Gods  - “Just let me see what it is, just let me see it - please!”  And when, after fraught minutes of the fish plunging heavily I saw an oily green swirl at the surface, the pleading changed to: “Please let me land it, let me see it, let me touch it!” The Fishing Gods were kind and the fish (a monster of 1 ½ pounds) was drawn into the waiting landing net and laid reverentially on the grassy bank.  The wonder then as the folds of the net revealed for the first time the exquisite creature, perfectly proportioned, so smooth and green, a green accentuated by that unlikely red eye, and set with the tiniest of scales, those big paddle-like fins, the whole a thousand times prettier than any illustration had suggested.

To this day I haven't had my anglers dreams of barbel fulfilled, having only caught one, but I have been blessed with beginners luck on my first serious attempt at diving with them.  This was in the Hampshire Avon where I shared a classic overhanging willow swim with a group of large barbel, many into double figures. Andy Brown of Avon Angling, who knows the river well, had kindly baited up a swim for me over a period of a few days so when we arrived we found the water alive with barbel, drifting in and out of the shadow of a large willow, the occasional fish performing a feeding roll right over the baited area.  Rarely have I kitted up in such a state of feverish anticipation and it was all I could do to stay calm enough to double-check my diving and camera kit before entering the water.  When I finally did I was shocked at how cold the water was, but this was soon forgotten as the visibility was good and the prospects for great photographs very promising.  I worked my was as slowly as I could bear towards the willow, trying to stay calm, keeping my breath steady so as not to send all the fish scattering up-river.  Watching from the bank, Andy saw that at least half the shoal had done just that, but the remainder, as he has predicted, had sought the sanctuary of the willow. The first I saw, clearly, spotlighted in the beam of my strobe light, was a brace of large fish, looking as shocked at my arrival as I was amazed at them.  When I say large, they actually looked enormous - they were clearly ‘doubles’, and when you bear in mind that everything viewed underwater appears magnified by 30% and that these fish were only a couple of feet away, you can imagine how impressive they appeared.  The fish were not quite as relaxed as barbel apparently can be, perhaps due to the relatively shallow water, and the bulk of the shoal had pushed their way into heavy cover.  This was amongst the tangle of willow roots and branches which made photography difficult, as did the silt stirred up by such a concentration of big fish.  It was simply awesome to view these beautiful creatures as such close quarters. At times, as I squeezed further under the cover, I had the flanks of double-figure fish within touching distance.  After some time the fish began to settle to my presence and I chuckled into my regulator as a double-figure Hampshire Avon barbel, a fish of childhood dreams, started to feed within a foot of where I lay. I have yet to return, but I hope that this is merely the first of many such encounters.  The experience, probably the best of my dives with coarse fish, meant as much to me as catching a good barbel ever could, and somehow made up for my poor efforts with the species as an angler.

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peregrine falcons	deer	pictures of otters	pictures of squirrels	kingfishers	wildlife art prints	bird art prints