In the annals of ichthyologic illustration there a hundreds of wanna-be realists but very few masters. Ron Pittard and Joseph R. Tomelleri are two of the latter; their ubiquitous posters of trout and other gamefish have graced the walls of seemingly every fly shop (and trout bum’s basement) in the world since the sport went into overdrive in the ‘90s. But they are now surely to be joined by New Zealand painter Martin Simpson, whose talent is huge if not yet his body of work. What defines the three of them is not a wistful, Audubon revivalist approach, nor surrender to the currently popular abstract deconstruction style, but rather very much the opposite. These guys hail from the genre of medical illustration accuracy when it comes to depicting fish and what they lack in conventional artistic sentiment they make up in unbelievable photo-realism.

Martin Simpson is a bit of a Renaissance man – painter, poet, photographer, and passionate trout fisherman. His resume lists his biggest trout caught to date (12 ½ pound brown, if you’re curious) before he even describes his artistic background!

Martin was born in 1967 in Rinteln, Germany to British parents serving in the British army. He moved to England when he was 18 months old, and on to New Zealand when he was six. He has lived there ever since, currently residing in a very rural location north of Wellington near the small town of Pahiatua. He has a diploma in Industrial Design but is basically self-taught as an artist. He teaches drawing, photography and design on a part-time basis, filling the rest of his waking hours in the pursuit and capture of trout, both on the rivers of New Zealand and the illustration boards in his studio.

So far Martin’s professional art career has consisted primarily of private commissions from anglers wishing to commemorate a trophy fish they’ve caught. Of course, they might be just as well off taking a great photograph because that’s what Martin’s illustration of their catch eventually looks like – extraordinary realism. Recently Martin has begun producing fish portraits with the water and bank the fish are laying in rendered at the same extreme level of detail, and they are pretty much indistinguishable from those photos you shoot of fish you catch when you’re all alone. But he also markets several limited edition prints, of rainbow and brown, that are in the rarified realism class of Pittard and Tomelleri.

“I’m a perfectionist and my paintings are anatomically accurate down to the correct number of scales, fin rays, etc., all rendered life size with true living colors I create with Winsor & Newton Gouache, an opaque watercolor,” he explains. “I’ve developed a patience I never dreamed possible. I can now spend all day on an area that is smaller than your hand. It can take me all day just painting the approximately 5,000 scales on a large trout!”

To Martin Simpson wild trout are the most beautiful things that exist and he humbly asserts in one of his poems that they defy artistic duplication: At last, in hands, the glittering prize That humbles human art Marvel all, at such a work Till time comes for to part. We’re not so convinced that’s true.

Decide for yourself at : www.martinsimpson.co.nz