A Kid Called Turtleman Grew Up to Paint Fish

As a child, Nick Mayer could be found doing one of a few things: toddling behind his mother at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, staring curiously at the pages of a Time Life book called The Sea, or making sense of it all with leftover supplies from his art professor father. Once he got a bit older, he’d spend hours knee-deep in a muddy pond in Rhode Island, catching and releasing turtles with a group of neighborhood boys.

For Nick, appreciation for aquatic life and art seemed to come naturally, though it was certainly nurtured by the freedom his parents gave him to explore his own creativity and the world around him. He’s now a father and full-time artist, and his detailed watercolor paintings of marine animals put the natural beauty of wildlife on canvas in a stunningly realistic display of what nature has to offer — and what is at stake if we don’t take action. He also helps to fund scientific research and educational art programs that inspire conservation efforts through his organization, the Nick Mayer Wildlife Fund.

I met with Nick on Zoom to ask about his work, what inspires him, and the relationship between art, awe, and advocacy. 

Emily Cain: Let’s start from the beginning. I know that you’ve had this fascination with nature and aquatic life from a very young age. Can you tell me more about that?

Nick Mayer: I don’t know what it was. When I was a little kid, probably just like 2 years old or something, my mom used to take me to the Museum of Natural History in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I just loved the place. I remember this one particular diorama of the prehistoric sea. I always was obsessed with that one diorama that had these old prehistoric squids and stuff like that. And there was this thing called the Time Life book series — kind of like National Geographic textbooks, but not for school — that my parents got from somewhere, and there was one called The Sea. I would just look at the pictures. It was before I could really read. I just always have been kind of drawn to aquatic things, for some reason.

EC: How interesting that art, with the museum and book, has always been part of your relationship with nature.

NM: The diorama was sort of like a sculptural type of thing. There was also a lot more art in textbooks and magazines then, too, as opposed to photography. A lot of the portrayals of sharks and underwater scenes and stuff were all painted. And my dad was an art professor. He’d bring home all kinds of art supplies and stuff that students would leave behind, and so I had this never-ending supply of art supplies.

EC: I read about your old nickname Turtleman, which you earned by wrangling turtles as a kid. I thought that was just great. How important was that access to nature, and the freedom to explore it, at such an early age?

NM: That was a pretty cool childhood. It was in the days before parents really worried about their kids’ safety as much as they do now, maybe. All the neighborhood kids would go to this muddy pond and catch turtles every day. It was kind of cool to just spend time like that — exploring, looking around, and focusing on catching turtles every day. We were all just fascinated by them. Me and my closest buddies, we’d catch these big snapping turtles, too, and just check them out, then put them back in the water.

EC: What do you think inspired you to bring that fascination to paper, besides your dad coming home with all these art supplies?

NM: In the same way that I’m not sure exactly why I’ve always been interested in aquatic things, I’ve always been artistic, too. I was drawing all the time, and all through school, I was doodling in my notebooks and drawing fish and stuff like that. From an early age, that was just something that I always did. It’s a form of expression of my interests. What was going on in my brain, I’d put down on paper, I guess.

EC: You have this time capsule of drawings from when you were younger, drawings of rainbow-colored whales and fish. But now, your art goes in the opposite direction and is a very realistic representation of what these animals look like in nature. Why is it important to you as an artist to depict these animals as they really are?

NM: My mission as an artist is to connect people with nature and to inspire an appreciation for these creatures by portraying them as they really are, which is a lot of work. You know, it’d be much easier to still paint a rainbow-colored whale and use artistic freedom to dream things up. But to me, for a lot of these creatures, the natural colors that they are, are just so mindblowing — like a mandarin fish. You can’t really even dream up colors like that. It’s just so crazy. That’s sort of what I’m trying to communicate.

EC: You’ve talked about turning awe into advocacy, especially with the Nick Mayer Wildlife Fund. That ties into depicting these animals as they are, and connecting people to what they otherwise might not be able to see and appreciate.

NM: The idea has always been that the paintings will eventually inspire people to support conservation in their own way, however that may be, through appreciating these creatures through my art. I had initially created the Giving Back series on my own. The idea evolved out of doing certain projects. Like, I painted a white abalone for the abalone restoration project associated with [the University of California] Davis. Doing that one illustration for them with the idea that a portion of proceeds would benefit their particular project was just kind of cool. It seemed to me like a direct way of tying my art to a particular conservation project. 

And then there have been more, like the Sulawesi shrimp I painted for Shoal Conservation, based in London. They’ve got this unique spin where they’re seeking out these incredibly rare freshwater species. The Sulawesi shrimp is found in Indonesia, in one pond on one island in the whole world. But it didn’t seem like that was quite enough for me, to just have a portion of sales going to these groups, so I wanted to do something bigger.

I recently hired the former CEO of this company called the Guy Harvey Foundation. Guy Harvey is another fish artist, oddly enough. And with this guy who was the former CEO, Steve Stock is his name, we’ve been creating these strategic partnerships to do more of a collaboration with different conservation groups — for example, with the American Fisheries Society, which is a group of very scientific-oriented primary researchers. A group of science fish nerds, basically. With the current administration, a lot of these people who do that kind of research are really struggling. The idea was to help them out. 

One of the things we’re doing is donating prints to people who exceed a certain threshold of donation [to the Nick Mayer Wildlife fund], and they get a gift from the American Fishery Society. We’re proposing that sort of system to a bunch of other partnerships that we’re doing. Then they reciprocate; they’re going to put my art on the cover of their magazine and share about this relationship with their newsletter list. There’s not really any money exchange. It’s just a collaborative kind of thing.

EC: I’m curious about your process. Are you typically able to go see the subjects of your art in person and study them?

NM: Obviously, I would love to be able to go to Indonesia and go snorkeling, but some of these places I can’t get to. Honestly, it is a project-by-project basis. For example, one of the first projects I did once I jumped into doing my art full-time was so crazy because I got the phone call maybe two days after I gave my notice for my job. This author asked me to illustrate his book, and it was a coffee table field guide to the fish of Catalina Island that was scientifically accurate, but a little bit whimsical, too, in the descriptions of the fish. 

For that project, I spent a ton of time out there really getting to know these fish and their colors. That was a case where I actually got to go and see these things. I think that’s a much easier process for me as an artist, to be able to see these things rather than working just from a photo.

EC: What are the sorts of things that you’ve discovered about an animal through your art, as you’re looking at them with an artistic lens?

NM: One thing that comes to mind is the scale pattern on a tuna. Unless you actually look at a tuna really closely, they look kind of smooth. But there’s actually a patch of scales here that’s pointing one way and they’re a certain size, and then there’s the lateral line, and then there’s these big scales that are on their shoulders that are weird shapes. It can be a little overwhelming, but I just have to map it out and give it time. It’s just more of a patience thing and having this scientific eye of observation. 

Once I figure it out, I start the whole painting process. I start first by sketching everything out in pencil. That’s the work, the research phase. Then the painting is the fun part. After I’ve done all the work of what the scale patterns and the fins look like, and I get it all mapped out, then actually putting the paint on, that’s fun. Whereas sometimes doing all the anatomy work can be sort of like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to take forever.’

EC: You studied marine biology and have experience in research, so you have this scientific approach to your art that’s really interesting. How do you maintain your passion for art when it starts to feel like work?

NM: On the surface you might think, ‘Wow, this is really freaking boring, just doing this over and over again, painting more fish.’ Right now I’m painting an Arctic char for Johnny Morris, who’s the founder of Bass Pro Shops. He and his son caught this Arctic char way up in the Arctic Circle, and it’s fluorescent orange. It looks kind of like a salmon or a trout, and the whole thing is fluorescent orange, and it’s going to be a lot of work. I’ve started laying out the scales. I actually count the scales along the lateral line because each fish has a unique number of scales on their lateral line that is specific to that species. It’s sort of like a fingerprint for humans —  almost an identifying thing. I’ve gotten maybe one quarter of the way there doing those scales, but it’s a monotonous process. What’s keeping me going is I can’t wait to paint that fluorescent orange paint, you know? It’s just going to be so wild.

I put together this new series of paintings that I’m doing that is completely different. It’s a series of paintings of larval octopi and plankton — juvenile little tiny creatures painted on black paper. There’s a specific kind of scuba diving called blackwater diving where you go at night in really, really deep water off the ocean trench. But you’re on the surface, and on these dark nights, all these creatures come up from the bottom of the ocean to the surface. You use a green dive light to attract them, and you can photograph and see these creatures. The whole series has to do with ocean plastics awareness, painting these octopi with plastic bags and pieces of plastic. So that’s coming from me instead of someone who’s hired me to make a painting.

I am still really driven. A number of people commission brown trout lately. It’s been really cool to reconnect with trout again, so to speak. These recent paintings of trout, I like a lot better than my older ones. So I seem to still have a lot of motivation to keep going. And there are still so many fish that I haven’t painted yet.

Check out more of Nick’s paintings at nickmayerart.com