JEREMY FISH—THAT’S A COOL NAME. Every once in a while that is the opening question in an interview: “why did you choose that to be your art name?”. But it is actually my real name. If I had to actually choose a name I would have picked something else. Like when I was a kid I used to get in trouble for skateboarding, so I would give the authorities a fake name. Me and my friends would challenge each other to raise the bar and come up with the most ridiculous fake name ever. Mine was Dick Tickles.
YOU HAVE A SOLO SHOW COMING UP AT THE LAGUNA MUSEUM OF ART—CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT THE WORK YOU’LL BE SHOWING? Well I’ll have acrylic on wood and a lot of drawings and mostly all paintings and 80% of paintings and a few wood and sculptures and a bit of furniture that I have been working on.
YOU’RE KNOWN FOR YOUR ANIMAL-INSPIRED ART…CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE LOTS OF THAT IN THIS UPCOMING SHOW? Most definitely—it’s animals across the board in this one. More specifically, the theme is about hard times—an easily-digestible theme these days. As human beings you would like to hope that through difficult times you can gain knowledge or better yourself through the experience. The positive outlook is that yes, we are all going through hard times, and we just continue trudging forward. I illustrate the theme with a library of animals instead of people. It’s a 40-piece story with all these animals quarreling over the last of the natural resources and evolving to become stronger.
ARE THERE ANY NEW ANIMALS IN THIS SHOW? I did a road trip through Texas with my dad and we saw all these armadillos dead on the side of the road. They get hit by cars—it is sad, they have these really cool little faces. I had never seen one up close before. The last six paintings I did were inspired by that trip through the Southwest—I did a buffalo and an armadillo and a wolf, for instance.
ANY PARTS OF THE HUMAN ANATOMY INSPIRING YOU RIGHT NOW? There are a lot of hands in the show. I use hands because they are really powerful—they provide the gateway to being tactile. And they project so much emotion.
ARE YOU INTO TAXIDERMY? I own a little taxidermy—a really nice antelope and a pigeon. And I would love to have a stuffed armadillo.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE ANIMAL CHARACTER? I use the rabbit the most—I think that’s mostly because I was drawing them before I took drawing that seriously. There’s this gang I had with my friends in high school and the pink bunny was the symbol of our gang. I still draw it the same way I used to back then. He is my favorite animal character and he has the largest army of meanings. I use him across the board to mean family, and loved ones, and speed and agility and a rebellious nature. --Caroline Ryder
