The Cairns Post is a major News Corporation Newspaper in Far North Queensland that exclusively serves the Cairns area.
Steve had contacted Cairns Post earlier in the week to see if they would be interested in doing a story since he had the two girls, Jess and Sheena learning as much as they could of the craft and thought it would be a great interest story. So we stayed to watch the process of the interview and photographing.
As it turned out it, there was no mention of the girls in the article and it became a story regarding Steven's latest accomplishment and rightly so, of his first prize Masters placing in the recent Australian Association of Wildlife Artists Championships that were recently held in March 2018. Steve's winning entry can be seen HERE in a previous blog entry.
Steve has had many years of experience in fine tuning fish reproduction and was himself mentored by the late Ian Pike who pioneered the exact moulded reproduction process that do not deteriorate like taxidermist treated fish mounts can and do. This process is now well adopted and respected around the world.
No two fish are the same, for example the eyes of a marlin as as individualistic as human's are. It is not simply mass reproducing a type of fish and painting them all the same, though this can be done but this process is not art. The art is in creating and respecting an individual fish and it's characteristics and it's actual markings, colourings etc to be an exact reproduction. It is also about the position of the fish, the curves, the fins and also the way in which it is best mounted, either wall, pedestal or suspended.
We have all learned so much from Steven, especially Jess and Sheena! It truly is a very interesting and respectful craft!