Additional information
by Ray Troll (Artist)
Ray Troll's new
book Spawn Till You Die: The Fin Art of
Ray Troll is an exuberant plunge into the fantastic realities of sea
creatures and prehistoric animals that come alive with scientific realism and
his quirky sense of humor. For 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.
Author Biography
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.
Number of Pages: 232
Dimensions: 1.02 x 11.02 x 8.9 IN
Publication Date: January 30, 2024
