Malukchuk

Every year, thousands of spawned-out salmon carcasses decompose on the river banks in front of my house in rural NW Alaska. You might say a dead stinky fish is an odd topic for a painting, but to me, they are a thing of beauty. As they rot, the nutrients released from their bodies enter the waters to nourish microbes and small invertebrates which in turn feed the growing salmon fry. The young salmon will return to the ocean and, in a few years, come back up the river to spawn and die like their parents did.  And so I think of these paintings as happy scenes - of lives lived to their full conclusion. We should all be so lucky!