I’m often asked how I came up with the Abstract Fish Face series. As much as I’d like to say it was just a brilliant epiphany, it wasn’t. It happened over the course of a few years. Back when I first graduated from Kendall, an art school in Grand Rapids Michigan, I had no idea what to do with my degree and talents. At that time I was serving tables at the Olive Garden. My wife Janell told me she thought that the server job was only getting in the way of my brand new career as a professional artist…..what ever that was. So I quit my job as a waiter, and put all my efferts into becoming a successful artist. Since college really didn’t  give me any ideas of how to do that, I went with the advice of my parents, and started showing at as many summer art shows as I could. I look back on that time with such fond memories. We would make about $500 – $1500 at most shows, but once in a while we would not even cover the entrance fee. At that point I was still searching for my style as an artist. In my booth were oil paintings of fish in all kinds of different styles; underwater scenes, studies, whimsical illustrations, pencil renderings, but none of them really stood out as my own thing, being completely recognizable as a “DeYoung”. After finishing a of couple fish portraits, I started thinking about how the actual shape of the fish’s head and the negative space around it was distracting from what was happening with the colors and patterns with in the fishes face. So I tried something completely different, the first “abstract fish face” painting. That next weekend at an art fair on the shores of Lake Michigan, I sat unseen behind my white 10×10′ fair tent and listened as group after group discussed this new fish face painting. People where intrigued by it. I noticed that women in particular were far more interested in it than the previous work I’d been doing. They commented on the bright colors and the patterns, and that if you weren’t a fisherman, you might not recognize what the painting was. That first painting sold that first show, so I painted another one. After a few shows I started bringing three or four fish face paintings with me to the shows, and my other styles of fish paintings were going unnoticed and untalked about next to them. I began to realize how rare a contemporary style of painting was  in the subject matter of fish, and that people who collect fish art were hungry for it, they were ready for something new.

I’ll never let my father forget, he came to an art show that summer and saw the new “Abstract Fish Face” paintings hanging in my booth. After several moments of looking at them, he came back behind the booth and said, “I don’t know what’s up with your new series of paintings, but I don’t really like them. I think they are a big waste of time and talent.” Well at least he was honest with me, but I felt differently about them. Not only did I think they looked great, they were a lot of fun to paint. It must be added that my Dad is about my biggest fan, and he and my Mom have encouraged my art career since the private art lessons they signed me up for in fourth grade……thanks Mom and Dad!

Below are a couple of the first fish face paintings I painted.