Spawning Sockeye Salmon #1 by Bob Acton

Sockeye placed in modern home

Bob Acton

Spawning Sockeye Salmon #1

Ceramic

20 x 36 x 10 cm

Sold

Hand built ceramic sockeye salmon sculpture in spawning colours, red body, olive head, hooked jaw, mounted on a carved black stoneware base.

A sockeye stops eating when it leaves salt water. Everything after that comes out of its own body. The silver goes red, the head turns olive, the jaw hooks. The colour is not a display. It is the fish spending itself to reach the gravel it came from.

The mouth is open. That decided the piece. Not a leaping fish and not a trophy. A fish partway through a change that ends where it is going, still swimming.

Hand built, scales cut one at a time into leather-hard clay. Colour laid in with underglaze and pulled back with oxide wash so the red sits under the surface rather than on it. The base is stoneware with small fish carved into the face of it.