It has been a long time since I painted goldfish in transparent watercolor. I’ve been missing out! They lend themselves perfectly to the medium.
As a kid, my dad had a tropical fish tank. We all enjoyed watching them swimming around happily. Although I was really young, I have two clear memories of that tank. The first was when our angel fish laid a zillion eggs all over the side of a plant. I was convinced that we’d have thousands of tiny fish swimming around in no time and that we were about to go into the fish business! Not a single egg developed.
The other memory involves something I bought for the tank. While at the nearby Weston Mills pet store, I saw that they had an aquarium ornament bubbler that looked like the Lunar Lander from the Apollo missions. Like every kid at the time, I was a bit space and rocket obsessed, so I checked my lawn-mowing money and was ready to buy it on our next visit. Although I’m sure both of my parents thought it was amazingly tacky, my dad said it was okay to put it in the tank. I brought it home, and my dad helped me get it hooked up to the air pump. That was exciting, but… After a while I got a little bored with the spacecraft always floating and bubbling at the same position. To attain the proper level of excitement, I decided it needed a “pilot.” So… I started plugging and unplugging the pump from the wall to change the lunar lander’s level. Now that was more like it! Eventually I ended up getting a whopping shock as my hand slipped across the terminals of the plug while trying to pulse it on and off more quickly. Well, that wasn’t the level of excitement I was hoping for. Understandably, after that voltage discharge the lunar lander saw a lot less kid involvement! Pain, after all, is an unpleasant but incredibly effective teacher. Eventually the lunar lander was covered in algae and mysteriously disappeared. It was replaced one day with a curtain of bubbles coming from a sparkling new air stone. It sure was nice of my parents to indulge me in that hideous aquarium toy!
When I went to graduate school, I started keeping fancy goldfish. My brother Ted soon caught the “bug,” and we became somewhat, um, no, very obsessed with different breeds and how to best get them to thrive. Soon it was a friendly competition to see who could bulk their “goldies” up to unnatural proportions. I visited Ted after being in grad school for a few months, and his tiny goldfish had swelled into leviathans! I was flabbergasted. Ted has always been one for the academic approach, researching all his hobbies with great skill and enthusiasm. After watching me jealously admire his fish, he produced a package of his “secret weapon” that he had bought for me. He had been using a Japanese brand of fancy goldfish food packed with all sorts of fresh, natural ingredients—and probably a dab or two of “unicorn horn” and “tiger paw” for good measure. The majority of the text on the bag was in Kanji or Katakana, but from the massive Red Oranda on the package, there was no mistaking what it promised! Ted comically insisted that if Arnold Schwarzenegger was both a goldfish and Japanese, this would be his “supplement” of choice. As is always the case, Ted knows! After switching to his miracle diet, my fish expanded at an incredible rate. I later supplemented their Japanese meals with peas and other fresh foods.
Before long, my problem was trying to stop their growth! My fancy goldfish kept out-growing their tanks. I found out later that goldfish were believed to continue growing throughout their lives if given enough clean water and space. At the time, scientists theorized that goldfish release a hormone that slows growth. When that reaches a certain concentration in the water, they stop growing. What I discovered was that the “stop growth time” coincided with the time they got big enough to completely pollute the tank with nitrogenous waste. I had to flush out the tank almost completely every week, or they’d start getting sick. I haven’t researched it again since giving up the aquarium life. Maybe the hormone thing has been disproven. In the end I spent less time enjoying the fish and more time cleaning out the tank and medicating them when they got sick.
My last fish died about 10 years ago. He was a gorgeous Oranda between the size of a baseball and a softball: huge! I do miss having fish, but don’t miss the work, which was too much with young children in the house.
I still am a huge fan and have spent way too much time looking at goldfish photos on Instagram. Over the years my brother and I had almost every variety imaginable. Calico Ryukins, Orandas of every color option, Telescope Moors, Lion Heads and Veil Tails were some of the favorites. Every time I go to a pet store, even if I’m just there to pick up something for our dog, I always check to see what fancy goldfish varieties they have… and then peek at the birds to see if they have lovebirds. While I’m there it can’t hurt to see if they have any turtles, snakes or lizards… oh yeah, then there are the guinea pigs, hamsters, mice and rabbits. You know, it really is best that I don’t go in, or I’ll lose an hour.
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
