Artist Statement

Fish paintings! How unassuming and without implication of the detrimental issues surrounding the global fishing industries we rely on for our seafood! I bet I can just look at these paintings and I sincerely doubt that I’ll be prompted to reflect on the decisions I make related to what I consume! 

If that oddly specific thought is what came into your head when you approached this exhibit, I have some unfortunate news for you, which is that these particular fish paintings are not unassuming nor without implications of the detrimental issues surrounding the global fishing industries we rely on for our seafood. And while you may look at these paintings, I daresay you may also be prompted to reflect on the decisions you make related to what you consume. 

This exhibit exists for a few reasons. Another unrelated research project I worked on this past summer led me to painting 24 dead fish, so I suppose that in the back of my mind when I was going through project ideas, I couldn’t imagine a reality where I wasn’t painting dead fish on my free nights and weekends. Aside from this, a well timed solo bus ride to the Oregon coast after an ecology conference while reading a book about the environmental and ethical toll of consuming animals was enough inspiration-fuel to spark the idea for this project. 

I grew up with a basic understanding that factory farming and commercial fishing weren’t great for the environment (and of course the animals themselves). I love the outdoors and animals are very high up on my list of favorite things, but until high school I found it easy to separate my food decisions from the things I care about and believe in. The world just felt too big for me to think that what I chose to eat mattered. Reading books like Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer changed that. I think the book was especially powerful for me because it wasn’t the barrage of animal torture imagery that you might expect from plant-based propaganda. While this certainly has its place in drawing attention to where what we eat comes from and the truly unnatural ways we have adopted for sake of efficiency, I don’t think it is as effective in causing people to reconsider the choices they make. Presenting imagery and statistics like this can cause an issue to seem so out of hand that individuals feel like what they do won’t have any impact on the greater issue and we can even temporarily heal the guilt we feel with a bandaid of apathy. I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t have a basic awareness of the horrors of factory farming or commercial fishing but again, the problems just seem so big that it is easier and logical in a busy society to turn the other way and pretend it's not happening. Cognitive dissonance. As the book puts it perfectly, “While it is always possible to wake a person who's sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.”

I’m definitely not innocent of ‘pretending to be asleep’ when I know about large scale problems that are happening around me. It’s so much easier to care about something for the moment it is presented to you and then let the hustle and bustle of life take over again and continue to allow convenience to guide our decisions. The world we live in is set up in a way where if you want your actions to match your values, you often have to do something different from the default. We’re all busy college students, and I doubt your most pressing concern right now is the welfare of some fish you’ve never met. Going out of your way to change what you are choosing to eat might not be something you had originally planned to invest energy in, but I think that you can make a positive impact on these issues by just starting with being aware and resisting apathy as much as possible. 

If you’ve gotten this far down the page, either you’re one of my close friends and want to be able to say you read the whole thing, or you’re somewhat invested in the point I’m trying to make. Either way, you compose the audience of people who are more likely to walk away with something and apply it to your day to day life. If there’s one thing I hope that you can remember is to think about what matters to you, and when you can, let your decisions align with this. Even if it's just one day a month that you decide to not eat meat, or eat fish whose capture has a lower rate of habitat destruction, whatever it is that you chose to do will make a bigger difference than you think. Problems like climate change, habitat destruction, and biodiversity loss might not be solved instantly if a single person partakes in a ‘Meatless Monday’ but if we all make little changes that fit into our personal lifestyles, we can actually combat these issues. But we certainly won’t achieve anything by doing nothing.

Sources for this project:

“Bycatch - Explained.” YouTube, YouTube, 30 May 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOO8FQ80cbk., “Bycatch - Explained.” YouTube, YouTube, 30 May 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOO8FQ80cbk.,“Bycatch.” IWC, iwc.int/management-and-conservation/bycatch.,  Fisheries, NOAA. “Bycatch.” NOAA, www.fisheries.noaa.gov/topic/bycatch. , “Fisheries.” American Bird Conservancy, 11 Mar. 2022, abcbirds.org/threat/fisheries/. ,Foer, Jonathan Safran. Eating Animals. Penguin Books, 2018., “Operation Dolphin Bycatch.” Sea Shepherd Global, www.seashepherdglobal.org/our-campaigns/dolphin-bycatch/learn-more/., Protecting Turtles from the Threat of Bycatch | Initiatives | WWF, www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/protecting-turtles-from-the-threat-of-bycatch. , Seafoodwatch.Org, www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendation/anchovy/european-anchovy-51832. ,Stoops, PJ. “On the Subject of the Blue Runner, a Humble and Unadorned Fish.” On the Subject of the Blue Runner, a Humble and Unadorned Fish, professorfishheads.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-subject-of-blue-runner-humble-and.html. ,“What Is Bycatch? | Mongabay Explains.” YouTube, YouTube, 16 Jan. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjFSgr_B38I.