Beautiful Swimmers is the latest permit painting that I’ve done. They’re such dynamic fish in that they are the ultimate fish to catch on a fly rod. This is also a change in formatting, a rare vertical painting! I particularly like the composition in this piece with lots of water on top of the subject to show the depth. Because of the depth, the greens and light blues that you would find in shallower water are tending more to the darker blues but still enough light to make the sand shine. I tried to represent the movement of the ray by highlighting the sand that the ray would kick up in the process of hunting for crabs or shrimp that would be buried deep in the sand. Of course the permit is looking for anything the ray discovered that might have escaped.