Last Fishing Trip with My Brother
This painting is based on a photograph taken during the last time my brother and I went fishing together. It was on Payette Lake, north of Donnelly, Idaho, where he lived.
It was a crisp winter day. The lake was quiet, the air cold, and we spent the day doing what we had done together many times over the years. The fishing wasn’t spectacular—we caught a couple of small lake trout—but that hardly mattered. In the photograph I am holding one of them while my brother stands beside me.
At the time, neither of us knew this would be our last fishing trip together. Like so many moments in life, it seemed perfectly ordinary while we were living it. Only later did it become precious.
What makes this painting especially meaningful to me is the way it came into being. It was painted in oils, alla prima, in a single sitting that lasted only about half an hour. There was no struggling, no endless revisions. It simply flowed from the brush, and somehow I managed to capture the two of us in a way that felt completely convincing. Those rare moments don’t happen often, and I have learned to appreciate them when they do.
Of all the paintings I have made over the years, this is one I will never part with. It isn’t about the fish or even the lake. It is about my brother and one ordinary winter day that became extraordinary simply because it was our last fishing together.