Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433799
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 1 0 "I believe people fly fish to enter a more serene state," she continues, "one that is completely free of the chaos and pressures of our modern society. I strive to capture these brief moments of perfection on canvas so the viewer can remember the utter simplicity of the experience." Remembering . . . Yes, but far more than that. One can almost smell the trout and feel the icy, liquid rush of water purling around it. Working almost exclusively in oils, she captures both the trout stream and its jewel-toned inhabitants. Mesmerizing as well are her extreme close-ups of a cutthroat's gill plate or the neon- red halos around a male brown trout's spots, signaling his readiness to spawn. Recently, Maddox has been painting large—4-x-4- to 4-x-6-foot canvases, sizes she employed for a gallery show at the Longview (Texas) Museum of Fine Art. Unlike many artists, she enjoys the business side as well, selling merchandise as diverse as greeting cards and trout-patterned scarves to gun cabinets, and even StealthCraft drift-boat wraps. (Oh, and lest you think it's all serenity and business with Maddox, that was her streaking past on her flame-red Ducati.) The Anthony Scarlati photo of AD Maddox on her website pretty much sums it up: She's chin-deep in a stream, with a rising trout's view of the world. AD Maddox, arguably the preeminent fly-fishing artist of our time, is currently based in her home state of Tennessee but credits Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with her discovery of fly-fishing art. In the late 1990s the then 28-year-old Maddox painted T-shirts, Western art, furniture, you name it, in order to fund her desire to remain in Jackson Hole. A friend of hers, Beth Overcast of Center Street Gallery, finally asked her, "Can you paint trout? Trout really sell." And sell they did. AD's very first trout painting sold for $1,000, just 20 minutes after being hung in Overcast's gallery. Young Amelia changed her handle to AD (the predominantly male fly-fishing art clientele wasn't quite ready for a young lady artist, she says), and off she took like a cutthroat on a downstream run, stripping the reel all the way to its backing. "I hadn't really fly fished," she says, "so I implored my dad to teach me, and he took me out on the Yellowstone River." The first trout she brought to hand set the hook hard on Maddox: "When I held my first trout, I experienced a bit of heaven. I knew I was put here to fish and paint. strawberry brook by ad maddox The Fish Caught the Girl S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 1 0