Through the subject of pet store goldfish, my work explores color, composition, and abstraction. In most of my pieces, I primarily used various shades of blues and oranges to create a complimentary color scheme. As I was painting, I noticed how subtle changes to the color of the water in the background could affect the overall feel of the image and opted to mix blues that had a greenish tint to them. I also experimented with cropping and arranging the fish in my images to abstract them. By zooming in on a specific part of a larger fish tank photo, I was able to capture the natural forms of the subjects without depicting them in their entirety. These abstract compositions juxtapose my hyper realistic painting style.
Aside from the colors of fish in water, I was also drawn to this subject because of the metaphor of fish and growing up. The journey of a fish swimming away parallels my own experience as I mature and swim on my own path.
