When I asked why the bottom fish was all bent up, one of the owners described it as “old and crippled. Old age really gets to ‘em.”
“I specialize in getting fish from the tropics before they die.”
“My grandchildren wanna see ‘em alive, not just in books.”
“I try to keep humans away from my fish. They’re the ones that ruin ‘em.”
“You rush, make mistakes, things happen.”
One of the owners breeds angelfish. He pointed out a big one and said it was 7 years old. Then he showed me this white one and said, “That’s his girlfriend.”
“We wanna sell ya the fish, but we don’t want ya to come back the next day sayin’ ‘my fish died.'”
“We don’t name them here. If you name ‘em, you have to bury ‘em when they die.”
About 1-3 hours each. Watercolor and white gouache. I painted these from photos and sketches taken at a local tropical fish shop. The owners have been running the shop for 35 years, and one of them has a private aquarium of 145 tanks in his house. The captions on these images include quotes and information from them.
Thanks for looking!
EDIT: I went back to the shop this morning and got some corrections on those numbers from earlier. Also fun fact: the shop is actually a registered aquarium, and the building used to house a fish market run by a different person. The aquarium was next door. Even before that, the building was a church, and there’s a granite stairstep out front that reaches 5 feet down into the basement, where you can find catacombs.
The owner also ran a radio show called “Fish Talk” for five years and set up an aquarium and mural in a local children’s hospital! Way too cool. Hearing him talk about the past made me nostalgic for a time period I wasn’t even a part of.
EY FATTY BOOM BOOM 