The koi fish in the small ponds at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco are vibrant orange, gold, and ultramarine blue. In painting this scene, I wanted to play off these complementary colors and show the wonderful patterns created by the sun on both the water surface as well as the cast shadows of the fish on the pond bottom. The shadows cast by the fish reminded me of Japanese calligraphy. For those of you who follow my work, you know my paintings contain fragmented association and memory of the sites I visit; thus, the underpainting is comprised of scattered tea leaves and tea bags, which I fixed to the canvas with acrylic prior to completing the scene in oil. A small Japanese pagoda and glimpses of the garden are reflected off the water in the upper portion of the painting.
