The Fishes

As a child, I would spend hours in the waters off Montauk, snorkeling and drifting among the fish. It was a place that I felt safe and at home. As an adult, an artist and a city dweller, I observed the people who live and work in New York City and found their movements resembled the schools of fish I had once swum with. There is a natural rhythm and pace to the crowds of people as they come and go with an intense and mysterious sense of purpose. When a tourist comes to an abrupt halt on the sidewalk the city fish merely split their school into separate streams for a moment, then merge back into their single, random, and synchronous motion. The city itself is a living entity -- a coral reef for humans of different colors, sizes and shapes to gather for work, shelter, feed or even hide. Recently I have been influenced by the art of the native peoples of the Northwest who infused the images of birds and bears and other animals into the bodies of fish, lending the deep spiritual power of those animals to the power of the fish totem. In the past year these various streams of images have begun to merge.