Scaling up

In a highly unusual art form, Pat McCarthy, from Esperance, WA, uses dried fish skins to recreate and reimagine the catches of his clients.

Story Hannah Siemer  Photos Rosie Henderson

Pat McCarthy spent much of his childhood catching waves around the quiet community of Denmark, 400km south-east of Perth. By his late teens, Pat had blended his love of surfing with his innate creativity by making surfboards.

Later, while living in the Kimberley region on a remote teaching post, a lack of surf saw Pat swap the board for a fishing rod, and the vibrancy and intricacy of the tuskfish and coral trout he was reeling in caught his artistic eye. “I loved the colours and the patterns,” Pat says. “We were throwing these sublime skins in the bin, and I figured there must be something we could do with them.”

So, Pat began experimenting using fish skins as a canvas, laying the skins down in panels and painting a fish over the top. In time, he transitioned to keeping each skin in its natural shape and incorporating it into the work, gluing the skin to timber and painting a fish around it.

Now based in Esperance, 720km south-east of Perth, Pat has completed many of these works and they can be found on the walls of fishing enthusiasts’ homes throughout WA and beyond. Called Fish on Fish Skins, Pat’s art is usually commissioned – he receives a skin from a fisher and immortalises the catch. For the sake of the postie, Pat asks that skins are well filleted, properly packaged and express-posted.