Overview

Ray Troll’s new book Spawn Till You Die: The Fin Art of Ray TrollFor more than four decades, this celebrated Alaskan artist has been luring, hooking, and landing fans around the world with his mesmerizing renditions of the inhabitants of Planet Ocean, past and present. His art is featured in the nation’s major natural history museums including the Smithsonian, in galleries, and in books, as well as on immensely popular T-shirts. Part natural history adventure and part underground comic, his work depicts beautiful and accurately drawn fish of all kinds, Northwest Coast totems, Freud and Darwin, fossils, resurrections of extinct animals, and much more. Troll’s art is deeply thought provoking (pun intended) but also simply fun to experience and never far from an inside joke he seems to be sharing with everyone. Some of his pieces are amusingly tongue-in-cheek, others are beautifully surrealistic and evocative of the interconnectedness of life on Earth, and his grandly composed major pieces are brilliant, inspiring panoramas of the natural world. His whimsy and attention to detail in his renderings of fish and other aquatic creatures has earned him a devoted following of scientists, anglers, and people who just like a good laugh. Welcome to the fishy, funny, inspiring art of Ray Troll.

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9781951038984

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Reviews

"When I study the way Ray depicts fish, the fish in my own life become more vivid and delicious and dear to me. When I ponder the length and detail of his artistic engagement with fish, and then consider the resilience and complexity of the creatures capable of inspiring such an engagement, I feel far fewer fears for the intergalactic Future of Fishes, Life, Ray, me, and Fish-lovers everywhere. –David James Duncan, author of The River Why and the Brothers K If there were such a thing, Ray Troll would be the Artist Laureate of hallucinatory fish images. –John Straley, poet and author of detective fiction Admitting you’re obsessed with fish isn’t easy. Especially since there aren’t any support groups or meetings you can go to, or therapists who specialize in fish addiction. How does a guy like Ray Troll tell his kids he’s spent eight hours a day for ten years drawing pictures of fish, filling up notebooks and scratch pads with endless renditions of ratfish, long ago abandoning the pretense or that metaphor has anything to do with it? Some of us are just different I guess, but it seems like a lot more people are tumbling to fish life of one kind or another, losing control with our finny neighbors. Brad Matsen author of Titanic’s Last Secrets, Jacques Cousteau: the Sea King and Planet Ocean: Dancing to the Fossil Record Ray is a different kind of paleoartist… he’s a scientific surrealist. His art, while often paleontological, is infused with the rest of life. In his images, extinct animals visit the modern world in daydreams, as if R. Crumb had time traveled back to the Cretaceous. –Dr. Kirk Johnson, Paleontologist and Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History As a visual artist who has popularized many scientific concepts, especially those relevant to natural history and evolutionary theory, he has reached broad audiences in ways that can affect public support of and education about science. And without either of these – public support and education – science would not happen so easily. –Dr. Tony Martin, Emory University From Publishers Weekly Alaska artist Troll’s knack for making intricate, playful drawings of all things fishy has led to an empire of books, magazine illustrations, museum shows, gallery displays and decorated t-shirts. This large-sized, full-color volume presents an overview of Troll’s drawings, complete with commentary by the artist. Some of the pieces are amusingly tongue-in-cheek (""Rebel with a Cod,"" ""Weapons of Bass Destruction,"" ""The Lucky Fish Gets the Cheeseburger""), while others are beautifully surrealistic. But the most impressive are his grandly composed fish-scapes (""Fishes of the Amazon,"" ""Bottom Fish of the North Pacific,"" ""A Ratfish Called Troll""), in which layers of perfectly-detailed fish are arranged into brilliant panoramas. Matsen’s lively introduction provides lots of useful information about Troll’s life and aesthetic leanings, making this a must-have book for any serious fan of the artist."

"From Publishers Weekly Alaska artist Troll's knack for making intricate, playful drawings of all things fishy has led to an empire of books, magazine illustrations, museum shows, gallery displays and decorated t-shirts. This large-sized, full-color volume presents an overview of Troll's drawings, complete with commentary by the artist. Some of the pieces are amusingly tongue-in-cheek (""Rebel with a Cod,"" ""Weapons of Bass Destruction,"" ""The Lucky Fish Gets the Cheeseburger""), while others are beautifully surrealistic. But the most impressive are his grandly composed fish-scapes (""Fishes of the Amazon,"" ""Bottom Fish of the North Pacific,"" ""A Ratfish Called Troll""), in which layers of perfectly-detailed fish are arranged into brilliant panoramas. Matsen's lively introduction provides lots of useful information about Troll's life and aesthetic leanings, making this a must-have book for any serious fan of the artist. Admitting you're obsessed with fish isn't easy. Especially since there aren't any support groups or meetings you can go to, or therapists who specialize in fish addiction. How does a guy like Ray Troll tell his kids he's spent eight hours a day for ten years drawing pictures of fish, filling up notebooks and scratch pads with endless renditions of ratfish, long ago abandoning the pretense or that metaphor has anything to do with it? Some of us are just different I guess, but it seems like a lot more people are tumbling to fish life of one kind or another, losing control with our finny neighbors. Brad Matsen author of Titanic's Last Secrets, Jacques Cousteau: the Sea King and Planet Ocean: Dancing to the Fossil Record As a visual artist who has popularized many scientific concepts, especially those relevant to natural history and evolutionary theory, he has reached broad audiences in ways that can affect public support of and education about science. And without either of these - public support and education - science would not happen so easily. -Dr. Tony Martin, Emory University If there were such a thing, Ray Troll would be the Artist Laureate of hallucinatory fish images. -John Straley, poet and author of detective fiction Ray is a different kind of paleoartist... he's a scientific surrealist. His art, while often paleontological, is infused with the rest of life. In his images, extinct animals visit the modern world in daydreams, as if R. Crumb had time traveled back to the Cretaceous. -Dr. Kirk Johnson, Paleontologist and Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History When I study the way Ray depicts fish, the fish in my own life become more vivid and delicious and dear to me. When I ponder the length and detail of his artistic engagement with fish, and then consider the resilience and complexity of the creatures capable of inspiring such an engagement, I feel far fewer fears for the intergalactic Future of Fishes, Life, Ray, me, and Fish-lovers everywhere. -David James Duncan, author of The River Why and the Brothers K"

Author Information

RAY TROLL is a world-renowned artist known for his scientifically accurate and often humorous artwork, inspired by field work and research in marine science, paleontology, geology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Ray’s renditions of everything from modern day salmon and marine mammals to bizarre creatures of the prehistoric past have become iconic in fishing, scientific, and environmental activist communities around the world. His work, distributed from the Soho Coho Art Gallery in Ketchikan, Alaska, can be found on posters, hoodies, and millions of t-shirts sported by fisher folks, the occasional celebrity and many others. Ray’s paintings and mixed-media drawings are in the collections of the Miami Museum of Science, the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Alaska Airlines, the Anchorage Museum, the Alaska State Museum, and the Ketchikan Museum. His books include Sharkabet: a Sea of Sharks from A to Z and Crusisn’ the Fossil Coastline and Cruisin the Fossil Freeway with Dr. Kirk Johnson, now director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, for which he and Kirk were awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He and Port Townsend writer Brad Matsen produced four popular books: Shocking Fish Tales, Planet Ocean, Raptors, Fossil, Fins and Fangs and Rapture of the Deep. Ray’s recent ventures include co-hosting the popular Paleo Nerd Podcast, featuring informative and amusing interviews with leading paleontologists and scientists from around the world. He is the recipient of a gold medal for distinction in the natural history arts by the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, a Rasmuson Foundation Distinguished artist award and also received the Alaska Governor’s award for the arts. Troll has a ratfish species named for him and an extinct genus of extinct round-bellied herring named for him. He also plays icthyo-centirc rock n’ roll music with his band the Ratfish Wranglers.

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