About John Piacquadio
I came up with the idea for this body of work on my porch one night thinking about what it would be like to combine a few varied, yet important aspects of my life visually. Mindfulness and meditation is something that had become important to me in the last couple of years... especially the concept of accepting the present moment as a means of reducing suffering. I had come to realize that fly fishing and fly tying had always been an active meditation that keeps me grounded in the present. No matter where my head is, fishing and tying had the ability to ground.
I prep for these ink works by tying versions of what I want to paint, and hopefully fishing the flies I tie as well. By doing this, I learn the fly inside and out, from how the hackle looked before it was palmered, to where the lead free is positioned under all that thread and dubbing.
Having built a multifaceted and scrutinized relationship with the fly, I attempt to translate the fly onto paper using a minimum of brush strokes... abstractly capturing the spirit, without representing too literally.