Fly Fishing Works
Paul Rasporich prepares for his solo fly fishing exhibition - No Clear Line at the Okotoks Art Gallery in 2018.
Paul is a lifetime fisherman. He was Trout Unlimited Canada’s Artist of the year 2000, and has been a part of many group exhibitions about fly fishing over the years - most recently at the World Trout Congress in Bozeman Montana in 2016.
In 2018, Paul had a solo exhibition at the Okotoks Art Gallery entitled, ‘No Clear Line.’
The inspiration for the exhibition came to him two years previous when he was able to make an artist's dream trip to Europe with my wife and sons. He had always wanted to see the Sistine Chapel, and the Piéta in Rome. A friend of his worked at the Vatican, and insisted that she book us a tour of the tombs below the Vatican. As Paul toured each Mausoleum that the Vatican is built upon, it was explained to us that the tombs were Pagan, and were built for wealthy families.
When the tour guide brought him into the first Christian tomb, (which is just yards away to from where the bones of St. Peter (may have) been discovered there was a mosaic of a silhouetted fisherman. It struck Paul, that perhaps fishing truly embodied holiness.
The tomb of the Julii (Julius Tarpeianus), or "Cristo Sole", Christ the Sun or the Christian Mausoleum. The Vatican, Rome.
The idea has been percolating for awhile with Paul to do a painting inspired by the silhouetted fisherman. As he says, “It is of two of my friends fishing for pike on the fly at a local man-made reservoir. It is at dusk, and there is a hazy beautiful sunset, unfortunately created by the Fort McMurray forest fires blazing up North, which were at their peak that evening. I was painting watercolours from the shore, and my friends were pulling up to shore to pick me up.”
No Clear Line, 36 x 48,” Oil on Panel, 2016. Collection of the Artist.
After doing this painting, Paul decided to title his exhibition No Clear Line based on the below quote by author Norman Maclean’s classic book, A River Runs Through It.
“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in Western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”
-Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It."