Past-to-future fishing story of my father, brother Richard and me.

When I was in my adolescence I went salmon fishing with my Dad and brother. My Dad and brother were fishermen and I was usually seasick most of the time. The past is at the right painted in black – Dad at the top, Richard below him, and me under the boat. I really spent most of my time seasick in the bow of the boat sleeping on life preservers. We never wore them…

I remember Dad shooting the sea lions that would follow and take the caught salmon as they were being reeled in. You can see the red coming from his eyes at the sea lion depicting the shooting. Notice the frowns on Dad and Richard as they concentrated on fishing and worried about getting the salmon on board without losing them to the sea lions. Dad was a rough man but the angel wings depict a somewhat softer side of his persona – the red in them show some harness. There is also a message from him to me, shown yellow, and I’m smiling at his teachings.

A caricature was found of my high school girlfriend a little later in the painting and I think it was what I learned from Dad about women. She was riding on the ocean as a future love as I moved into my later teens – being on the ocean depicts the dichotomy of the relationship of happy and sad times probably fueled by wishing for a better life and sadly coupled with addictions.

A whale or porpoise is coming out of the sea at the far left and I think that was about the whale I saw on one of the fishing excursions.

Susan’s caricature was found above the ocean as my current love and it depicts here looking at our life from above and trying to make sense of what she’s gotten into with me. Again, our relationship has been through many happy and sad times which I’m still trying to reconcile. I have faith that our relationship is in the sun as we still grow in our old age. I did see a dragonfly and a bat flying around and don’t know what that means.