I have finally completed “Kona Crowd”, the 22×30 watercolor that I began in January, soon after we returned from a week on the Kona Coast of Hawaii. The painting consists only of fish that I saw and identified while skin diving on that trip. This parameter gave me a framework, but I found I needed to repeat the appearances of several types of fish to fill in the painting. At first, I intended to leave areas of open water between many of the fish. As the work progressed, however, I kept wanting to fill in more and more until it became clear that any open water would be an anomoly. Thus, the end result is similar to “Hawaiian Fishes All the Way Down “, in which no water can be seen. Fishes overlap and completely fill the space. In that painting, I included only fishes found in Hawaiian waters, but they weren’t all ones that I had seen myself. “Kona Crowd” contains some of my favorites, but they are all fishes I saw on this last, most recent vacation. I always knew which fish I was painting, even when only a small bit showed in tiny background areas. They would be almost impossible for someone else to identify, though. It will be tricky trying to put together an identification chart for this piece. I could easily make a list of all the fishes included in the painting, but showing each background bit and identifying it will be difficult.
“Hawaiian Fishes All the Way Down”, “Wings of the World” and “Paradise”.