W.Va. artist turns trophy fish into paintings

WINFIELD, W.Va. (AP) - Janet Ripper Chambers is an artist, but she’s also a two-dimensional taxidermist.

The trophies she creates don’t start off as slimy, smelly carcasses. They don’t have to be gutted, stretched over fish-shaped chunks of foam and stitched back together; heck, once they’re hung on the wall, they don’t even have to be dusted.

Over the past couple of years, Chambers - the daughter of renowned wildlife artist Chuck Ripper - has begun accepting commissions from anglers who want to commemorate their trophy catches with paintings instead of stuffed fish.

For Chambers, the work is a labor of love.

“I’ve fished since I was a little girl,” she says. “Dad taught me to cast a fly rod in the front yard of our (Huntington) home. We always had fishing rods in the car, and we went fishing a lot. Now I go fishing with my husband, Doug.”

As an artist, Chambers grew up painting mostly birds, mammals and landscapes. That changed a few years ago when Doug encouraged her to submit a painting of a small fish - a southern redbelly dace - for the Division of Natural Resources’ annual wildlife calendar.

“He brought home some photos and books on the redbelly dace, and I started working on the painting,” Chambers recalls. “I really enjoyed doing that painting.”

She enjoyed it even more when DNR officials included the painting in that year’s calendar.

“They started liking my fish pictures for the calendar, and since then I’ve done others,” she says.

The calendar brought her art into public view, and the public noticed.

“Folks started seeing my fish paintings in the calendar and asked if I’d ever thought of painting fish that people had caught,” she says. “I said, ’sure, I can do that. Just send me some photos of the fish you caught and I’ll work from those.’”

Some anglers preferred to have their fish depicted without backgrounds. Others asked Chambers to show fish in their natural habitat.

“I did one series of trout paintings for a fisherman in Elkins,” she says. “He wanted his fish all to be pictured under water. Other people have asked that they be laid on rocks, surrounded by water and leaves, as in a still life.”

Since she began creating her picture trophies, Chambers has painted several of West Virginia’s most popular game fish as well as a few saltwater species.

“I’ve done all the trout species, largemouth and smallmouth bass, muskies, bonefish, snook, permit and tarpon,” she says.

Some of the paintings have been quite large.

“The canvas for the tarpon was 42 inches long,” Chambers says. “I did a series of three trout, and those were on 32-inch canvases.”

Like any wildlife artist, Chambers does her best to make the paintings as realistic as possible. It isn’t always easy. The tarpon, for example, has iridescent markings on its head and gills, an effect that was hard to replicate.

“The tarpon also has a very prominent scale pattern, and getting the painting’s scales to look right almost drove me crazy,” she says.

She started doing her fish paintings in gouache, an opaque watercolor medium. She has since switched to acrylic, which she says allows her to achieve effects she couldn’t achieve with gouache.

Being an artist in today’s computer age has its advantages. Anglers send Chambers photos of the fish they want painted, and Chambers sends them photos of the works in progress.

“With email, I can instantly send (an image of) what I’m working on and say, ’What do you think?’?” she says. “And they can send their ideas and suggestions right back. It makes for a more satisfied client.”

Chambers says the prices of her paintings vary widely.

“It depends on several factors,” she explains. “The size of the canvas, for sure, as well as the complexity of the image itself. Mainly it’s about the amount of time involved. There’s no easy way to put a price on them.”

The paintings she has sold so far have ranged between $300 and $600, which closely parallels the price for comparable taxidermy mounts. She says there seem to be two reasons anglers choose to have their fish painted rather than mounted.

“One, they don’t have to kill the fish. A lot of people are into catch-and-release fishing nowadays, and I think that trend is reflected in the number of commissions I get. And two, the paintings seem to be more popular with the anglers’ wives. A painting doesn’t have to be dusted nearly as often as a stuffed fish.”

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Information from: The Charleston Gazette, https://www.wvgazette.com