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						MY STATEMENT Confessions of a fish-boat maniac Before I tell all, let me first make clear how I am utterly not a fisherman/woman or even a water person. One whose childhood was mid-western, I knew little of the water except a few scenic ponds and creeks near our home. My fishing history is catching one small catfish on a church group outing. When I was young, my father owned a small aluminum fishing boat but used it very little. I had a few turns at the rudder. Oh, and yes, I once got to wade in Lake Michigan. Living in California for the last twenty years, retiring early, I often found myself at the coast with a paintbrush in hand, pursuing new artistic interests. Little did I realize I was inviting into my personality a strange compulsion, one that has since taken over my life. I have become a marine artist who loves painting commercial fishing boats. Yes, a fish-boat maniac. The craft that supply our favorite restaurants and markets are still run by tiny crews on small boats who brave death and disaster daily so we can enjoy our extra fresh broiled salmon, our crab Louis salads, our shrimp cocktails. All this dawned on me one day while I was walking around the Bodega Bay docks, gazing mindlessly at the fishing boats. One had a sturdy wooden worktable on deck with a homemade sign propped up, "Fresh Salmon Today." It was then and there I got it--there are still people here trying to make a living by selling their catch. Everywhere I go, I see small fishing fleets of boats with crews of two or three, heading out to fish, returning later to sell their catch. On the docks, anytime, night or day, I find fishermen and fisherwomen at work: cleaning, fixing, painting their boat, all to get ready to go out again and try their luck. After I learned about their design history, my boat art improved. It's very hard to draw something that you can see but don't understand at all--what its use is, what its name is, how it is like or unlike others of its kind. Practice helps too. Still I admit I would have given up trying to capture their beauty long ago if I didn't believe that the outsider's point of view is also valuable. I bring fresh eyes to the scenes I see. All this and more keeps pushing me to paint another boat or another harbor. Every time I visit the coast, I see something to excite my desire to create. And so it has gone for seven years now. It it still feels new. So I keep on painting and celebrating these beautiful boats. And sharing the results with others. I research the design-history of Monterey hulls, feluccas, and dories in my spare time. I guess this is my destiny. And I am lucky to be able to follow it. --Carol Lois Haywood, Pacific marine artist and fish-boat maniac. A note about my style... Value and pattern dominate my paintings. In this they resemble the look of some Japanese woodblock prints. Like them my art also features graded and blended color prominently. I  attend carefully to repetition of shapes and textures in a piece as they do. And my picture plane also tends to be rather shallow. Why? About seven years I saw a Japanese printmaker's retrospective at the Mendocino Art Center, and those unique images charmed me utterly. I find that my art has been moving ever more in that direction--and away from the more common techniques of contemporary watercolorists--ever since.