Artist Analee Fuentes makes her home in Oregon, but she attributes her love of brilliant, vibrant colors to her childhood in the Southwest, “where the landscape was a riot of light and color and [her] cultural artifacts (Mexican serapes, textiles and embroidery) were profuse with rich patterning and repetition.” She says that she is particularly attracted by things that are “ornate, excessive, overdone, colorful, and patterned.”
Brown Trout, oil on canvas, 56″ X 48″
She indulges this aesthetic in her series of large oil paintings called “Natural Selections,” including many close-ups of trout skins. During the summer months, Fuentes spends much of her time in the Cascades, and she is enthralled by the beauty of the fish that live in the rivers and lakes there.
Golden Trout, oil on canvas, 56″ X 48″
“They are Baroque little jewels, so little in fact, that I wanted to oblige a viewer to take note by increasing their size,” she says. “Straddling abstraction and representation, these large scale paintings are the result.” At five feet by four feet, these oil-on-canvas works capture the amazing radiance and blending of colors that we anglers see when we hold one of these wild fish in our hands.
To see more of Analee Fuente’s works, visit her website.
Golden Trout, oil on canvas, 60″ X 48″
These paintings are wonderful.. Thank you for publishing them.