About

About the Artist:

Paul Laemmlen has been interested in and has created fish art in one way or another since kindergarten. Much of his elementary school artwork consisted of crayon, colored pencil or tempera paint renderings of fish and fishermen. His mother recalled taking young Paul and his sister to the local Zoo and at the seal exhibit, after she purchased some frozen anchovies to feed the seals, Paul sneakily stashed one of the fishy snacks into his pocket without her knowing, and took it home - to look at, and study - because he loved fish!

Growing up in Central California, Paul taught himself to fly-fish at an early age and began to tie his own flies as a teenager, testing them out on his home water, the Kings River, located only ten minutes away from his home. One summer, his quest for trout continued when he and his High School pal, Ken Charters, planned a 2-week backpacking trip into the John Muir Wilderness of CA where they hiked over 100 miles and caught and photographed four species of trout.

After graduating from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science degree, Paul went back to work in California where he married his wife, Leslie, and started a family. Between family, work and church, Paul always found time to pursue his passion for fly-fishing and keep a hand in his fish art.

In 1996, Paul expanded his artistic creativity to include fish carving, and under the hand of Master Woodcarver, Lloyd Moore of Fresno, CA, learned the techniques of carving and painting fish. Sculpting fish from wood requires anatomical accuracy, and Paul's detailed study and observation of fish reference material, including many visits to a Cabela's freshwater fish aquarium, allowed him to study fish color, musculature and proportion on live, swimming type specimens. This background in fish anatomy would be instrumental in creating true-to-life representations of fish in his later work. Two separate backpacking trips into California's Golden Trout Wilderness to catch and photograph the three subspecies of Golden Trout provided reference photos for later renderings of these gems of gold from the High Sierra.

The subject for this fish carving was a Little Kern Golden trout caught in Clicks Creek on a backpacking trip in California's Golden Trout Wilderness with Ray Engstrom in May of 1997.

After experimenting with watercolor and acrylic paints over the years, Paul's current medium of choice for fish is a combination of watercolor and colored pencil. His drawings of fish in a traditional right-lateral pose represent live, swimming fish. Reproductions in high-quality Giclée prints of his original work in this medium are now available to the public.

Paul and his wife live in Cedar Hills, Utah. They have three grown children.