Untitled: Outdoors Munching on Sockeye Salmon
Untitled: Salmon Muncher, Pencil on Paper 2013
This is one of a couple of drawings I started and finished that were loosely based on my experiences in Alaska. After graduating from high school, I thought I wanted to live an adventurous life. I ended up working in a cannery, met a range of unstable people, and eventually hitchhiked from Seward to San Francisco. It was the most audacious few months of my life.
The drawing makes me think of a small creek I came across by chance. It was shallow enough to walk across. When I looked down into it, the salmon were packed so tightly it read as a torrent of fish rather than water. I’m not sure why I didn’t draw that scene instead of this one. It may be because I also remember catching a couple of salmon and cooking them over a fire like this.
I like this drawing. At the time, I was focused on narrative, and I think this piece gets close to what I was aiming for. The idea was to create a partial story, an image that doesn’t explain itself, where a viewer has to construct both a beginning (how did this person arrive here) and an ending (what happens next). It’s a picture I like having on the wall, an image that continues to open up even for me over time.