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When Europeans first arrived in the New World, lobsters were so plentiful that a minor storm could deposit two feet tall piles of the crustacean along the shoreline. They were so abundant and easy to harvest that they were known as “the poor man’s chicken.” Flick Ford brings us, in all its Technicolor glory, the world record lobster that was caught in 1977 off Nova Scotia, Canada, weighing in at 44 pounds, 6 ounces, measuring nearly four feet long. If it takes five to seven years for a lobster to reach the weight of one pound, we can only wonder how old this world record lobster was.
We don’t often get the chance to see just how beautiful these creatures are when emerging fresh from the trap. Perfect for the beach house or kitchen.
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Flick Ford fell in love with fishing at age five. His father, an accomplished
fly-fisherman and talented commercial artist/copywriter, instilled in him a
deep respect for nature and nurtured his early creativity.
Born in 1954 in Atlanta, Flick was raised in Westchester County, New York.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Flick fished the Adirondacks, New England, Long
Island Sound, Chesapeake Bay, Virginia and the woodland lakes of Quebec, while
pursuing two other loves: music (as lead singer in a garage rock band) and
art. He took formal watercolor classes in the 1960s; figure drawing and
graphic design classes from 1973 to 1976 and then studied art at Evergreen
State College in Washington State.
Flick moved to New York City in 1978 and dove into the audio/visual scene
including indie film, video, underground publishing, cartooning, illustration
as well as reconnecting with music. He performed in the East Village with
several bands, and wrote and sang lead in The Crazy Pages for almost twenty
years.
Ford left New York in 1993, heading for the Hudson Highlands where he quickly
became obsessed with fishing the NYC watershed. As he branched out to many of
the brook trout places where he had previously fished in parts of the
Adirondacks and Vermont, the effects of over twenty years of pollution, over-
development and acid rain became painfully apparent.
“I felt I should start to keep a record of the fish I caught and decided to
do it in watercolor paintings. I just want to catch and paint these fish, and
show how they appear to me in all their iridescent beauty.”
Today Ford makes his home in Putnam County, New York. He fishes more than 100
days a year and ties his own flies. He selects early every fish he paints for
its relative size and beauty. After landing a fish, he quickly gets a digital
photo before the colors fade, carefully measures it in all dimensions,
sketches details, counts scales, fin rays and finally traces it to get its
actual outline. He has developed a technique of successive washes utilizing
masking friskets and painstakingly detailed dry brush that make these fish
truly come to life on paper.
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