The Fish Artist

The Fish Artist

Halfway through the original draft of A Field Guide I got excited and started looking for an illustrator. I went on craigslist like people do when they want to find quality work at low prices. I didn’t have any money to offer so I offered half authorship for the best artist I could find. Back in those early days of the project I was going for the warm, nostalgic look of the Golden Guide series that I grew up with. The quality illustrations in those books have always brought me great comfort in times of upheaval or when I’m sitting on the toilet. They are broken down into little vignettes of information with an accompanying informative picture or illustration that makes a bowel movement just perfect. A cup of coffee, a cigarette, and the morning is complete.
After several days I received a response to my craigslist posting from a guy who said he was a professional fish and wildlife artist and he assured me that he would be the perfect person for the job. He gave me a link to his web site which I followed. I’d found my man. His name was Ted McKay.
After a couple of phone conversations he invited me to his house for dinner and to hash out some more details of A Field Guide. He lived in an old farm house just north of Nashville on Old Hickory Lake. The bricks had the pocked texture of an old house. Several outlying buildings where the servants had lived and the meats had been cured still stood on the two acre lot. All I could imagine upon seeing the house is that Ted McKay must be doing pretty well with his art.
Ted’s wife greeted me at the door. She was what I’d expected, a calmly attractive housewife in early middle age. I’d soon find out she was the perfect juxtaposition to her more exuberant husband. “Ted’s back there in the garage. He’s so excited to meet you.”
I walked into the garage/studio and found Ted fumbling at a very large printer, pushing a button, bottle of beer in hand. He turned when he heard me come in. “Hey man, it’s good to finally meet you,” he said, extending me his hand to shake. “Do you want a beer?”
“Yes sir,” I replied. I could see this was going to be a fruitful working relationship. What I was surprised by was that Ted didn’t look like a McKay at all. I would have guessed Chu or Woo. His mother was Korean and his Asian features showed him to have inherited most of her looks. Even in his speech he rounded out vowels with that “woe” sound you hear from some speakers of Asian languages. Over the telephone I had assumed it was a speech impediment in his otherwise twangy voice.
“I hope you like fish,” he said.
“Well, I’m writing a whole book about ‘em.”
“Good. I’m cooking crappie and French fries.” Crappie is among the best eating of fishes.
The walls of the studio were covered with Ted’s paintings of various species of fish. Other projects lay around on tables in various degrees of completeness. He had revived the old style of fish painting known as gyotaku in which a fresh caught fish is laid out on a table and ink or water colors are applied to capture the true color and distribution of colors on the fish. Next a thin sheet of rice paper is pressed onto the fish’s body creating highly textured, mirror image of the fish. Gyotaku doesn’t allow the fisherman wiggle room when recording the size of the fish. It started in Japan in the mid 1800’s (about the time Ted’s house was built) as a way to record the exact size of a fish. A large gyotaku rubbing of a three and a half foot long stripped bass hung by the door.
There was also a curiously taxidermed rabbit with antlers hanging on the wall.
We sat in the studio discussing the finer points of A Field Guide’s tone and overall the thoroughness of its treatment of the subject matter. We talked a little about the time line to publication which Ted was excited about. However when I tried to guide the conversation to establishing a timeline for some sample illustrations to send off to potential publishers and agents he grew a little more vague. “Well, I’m going to be on the road a lot the rest of the month going to art shows. Maybe I’ll have a chance to get some samples done by mid-August.”
“Great. No rush. I’d like to have a good sampling ready by the fall to really get this thing up and running.”
“I heard that, man. We’re goin’ to make us some money.”
We proceeded to the kitchen and Ted got the fish ready to dump into the fryer outside. Despite having had a couple of beers I was having a case of nerves which sometimes happens to me around food. I went to the bathroom and gagged a few times. Retching in private makes me feel better in those situations.
Outside at the deep fryer we sat around watching the grease get hot. We each had another Amber Bock. A pretty girl about my age pulled into the driveway and got out of her car. “Hi Marrissa,” said Ted.
“Hi Ted,” she replied.
“Do you want to have some fish with us?” he asked. I hoped she would say yes.
“No I’ve got to go to my yoga tonight. But thanks anyway.”
“Okay.” After she walked into the small shack behind the house Ted whispered to me, ”She lives in the slave quarters.” I laughed, sort of wishing I lived in a refurbished slave cabin instead of my small, climb-many-stairs-to get-to apartment. “She’s a sweet girl. Maybe I can try to hook you two up but she’s really shy.”
“Well, you have my phone number. You can give it to her. I wish you would.”
The fish smelled good and the potatoes even better, frying up with plenty of onions thrown in with them. Ted, his wife, and I sat in the old dining room that had been hosting meals since the mid-1850’s. We talked about politics, art, and my past. References to my time in the Navy usually resulted in an eruption of “Fuck George Bush,” from Ted. He wasn’t fond of the administration at the time. He said that during the Clinton administrations his art had sold in over 1,100 galleries and now it didn’t. I suppose the Iraq War dampened the public’s appetite for paintings of bluegill and bass. Political rants behind us Ted pointed to a painting on the wall of a group of birds. Their bodies were round and textured and russet colored. Their heads were drawn with clean, albeit simple lines. This was much different from the fish art he had shown me.
“Do you know what that is?” he asked. I told him it looked like a group of birds.
“It is but it’s actually a booby picture,” he said laughing.
“Why is it a booby picture,” I asked. Ted’s wife rolled her eyes in anticipation of what I imagine is a familiar story.
“I get a pretty young model and rub over her nipples with a pencil on onion skin paper.”
“Ted will be Ted,” allowed his wife. “I knew I was getting an artist when I married him.”
Over dinner I learned more about Ted’s uncanny talent for finding fish. Or maybe he was good because of practice. Over the years his income as an artist has given him the freedom to fish lakes and streams all over the Southeast. He tends to find a body of water that looks interesting and then fishes it. “That’s how I started fishing in Loretta Lynn’s creek at Hurricane Mills. I just started wading. The caretaker came out and told me to get out, that I couldn’t fish there. I told him I was that guy that had been on TV the week before with my art. He’d seen it so he told me it was okay. Now I go down there all the time. I catch a lot of good smallmouth in that creek.”
“I’d love to go with you sometime.”
“I’ll take you down there and show you how to really catch smallmouth.”
After dinner we said our good-byes and made promises to keep A Field Guide on track for publication the following spring. “We’re goin’ to go fishing and we’re goin’ to make a lot of money,” reiterated Ted. I petted the dog who was sniffing the fish grease on my pants leg then drove off. I stopped on the side of the road and peed in the lake because it was a long drive back to Nashville.
July ended, and August came and went. No word from Ted. I sent an email. He replied:
I'll give you a call next week, I have to leave for Fort Wayne this morning and I do need your phone number.

A couple of weeks later in early September I gave him a call and he told me to come on out to the house for a beer. By this point I doubted I was going to see any illustrations but the nights were pleasant for sitting outside and Ted’s house was a good place to sit and drink beer.
I arrived and once again Janelle let me in. “Ted’s in the studio,” she said.
I walked through the kitchen and opened the door to the studio. “Oh, hi man,” said Ted with his good natured smile. “How’ve you been?”
“Oh, just fine,” I replied, just then realizing a topless woman was lying under Ted’s hands and a piece of onion skin paper. “Maybe I should wait outside-“
“No, you’re a grown man. You’ve seen these things before. Go to the refrigerator and get you a beer. Get me one too. Carol, do you want one?”
“Yeah I’ll take one,” said the model, sheepishly.
I took the beer over and watched Ted rub the broad pencil across the onionskin paper, picking up the texture of Carol’s areola. As you would imagine it protruded up where her nipple was. I was sort of in awe at this unexpected good fortune. Carol was a pretty girl with pale shoulders and dishwater brown hair. She had dyed a neon purple streak through one length of hair. Her lip and eyebrow were pierced. She studied art at the local community college.
“Man, we never have gone fishing yet.”
“Yeah, I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”
“We’ll go before it gets too cold to wade. We’ll catch a bunch of smallmouth down at Loretta Lynn’s.”
“I’d love that. I’ve fishing some on the South Harpeth but haven’t caught too much lately.”
“Cause you’re tense my man. The fish know it.”
“I’m broke. That has a lot to do with it. And my latest fling has apparently decided to take her loving elsewhere.” [Note: this will be discussed in more detail in a later story.]
“Awe, I’ll set you up with Marissa. And when our book comes out we’ll make a lot of money.”
I decided not to press the issue. I enjoyed the atmosphere. Up on the wall above where Carol lay hung a picture of a martini glass. The olive was one of Ted’s booby rubbings and you can guess what part was the pimento.
Ted finished up on Carol and she casually sat up. Her breasts were perky but still hung with a sensuality one doesn’t find in a hard body. She put on her tank top sans bra and I consciously made an effort to not watch her getting dressed. Janelle brought out a tray of cheese and crackers and we sat out by the koi pond talking fishing and art shows with Ted throwing in the occasional “Fuck George Bush” to accentuate a point. It was pleasant evening but something in the casualness of it all caused me to loose hope that Ted would illustrate my book. In his defense I realize that providing eighty to one hundred quality illustrations is a lot more difficult than writing eighty to one hundred two hundred word descriptions of species.
I told Carol to look me up on myspace but she never did. Marissa never learned my name. And Ted still hasn’t taken me fishing.
But when A Field Guide eventually comes out I will be happy to give Ted a complimentary, autographed copy. He and Janelle showed me great hospitality and a couple of good nights of diversion during that summer.