The Thin Space: Mike Savlen, Blackfly Lodge, and the Art of Looking Longer
Some places seem to sharpen everything—the light, the color, the conversation, even the way you look at water. For a group of sporting artists gathered on Great Abaco Island in June 2016, Blackfly Lodge became one of those places.
Artist and angler Vaughn Cochran brought together five painters whose work approached the sporting world from very different directions: Peter Corbin, Bob White, Paul Puckett, Mike Savlen and Cochran himself. The idea was simple but rare: put artists in the same place, give them time to fish, paint and talk honestly about the work, and see what happened.
Five artists who did not paint alike
The differences mattered. Some worked traditionally, building quiet scenes rooted in the history of sporting art. Others pushed toward pop art, illustration or looser contemporary forms. Mike belonged firmly to no single camp.
Over four days, the group traded fishing stories, worked on a collaborative portrait exercise and talked about the questions artists rarely solve once and for all: How do you return to the same subjects without repeating yourself? Who are you painting for? How do you balance commissions with the work you feel compelled to make? And how do you keep the work alive when audiences are moving faster than ever?
Those questions still sit at the heart of what Mike creates today.
What an artist sees in the water
On the flats near Moore’s Island, the landscape offered far more than fish. Light moved across the bottom. Ripples broke colors into shifting shapes. Reflections, texture and depth changed with every step of the boat.
For Mike, that complexity is the real challenge. A familiar species can only be shown from so many obvious angles. Water is different. Look beneath its surface and the possibilities keep changing—planes overlap, shapes distort and colors bend through the current.
That is why Mike’s work is never simply an illustration of a fish. The subject may be a tarpon, permit, trout or striped bass, but the painting is also about motion, atmosphere and the feeling of seeing something alive in its own world.
Why Bob White called Mike a brawler
During the gathering, fellow artist Bob White described Mike in three memorable words: “Mike’s a brawler.”
It was not about aggression. It was about the way Mike approaches a canvas.
He works loosely, but not carelessly. A few decisive strokes are followed by distance and thought. He may step away, study what has happened and return when he can see the next move. Drips, runs and unexpected marks are not automatically corrected; sometimes they become the part that gives the painting its energy.
Like a fighter, he stays responsive. He does not force every canvas toward a predetermined finish. He works with what is happening in front of him until color, shape and emotion land together.
The museum bench in a scrolling world
Mike also raised a concern at the retreat that feels even more relevant now:
“We scroll through insta-art. We don’t sit on museum benches. I’m worried it’s killing us.”
The point was not nostalgia for museums or a rejection of technology. It was about attention.
A painting asks something of the viewer. You have to stay with it long enough to notice how the colors shift, how the water is constructed and how abstraction and realism can occupy the same space. When every image is given only a fraction of a second, that deeper experience becomes harder to find.
Mike believes art should reward the pause. It should give you something new when you look again.
From the canvas into everyday life
That belief eventually became part of Love My Oceans.
The idea was never to turn art into another generic coastal graphic. It was to let original paintings live beyond a single wall—to bring real brushwork, color and movement into pieces people could wear near the places that inspired them.
A shirt cannot replace the original canvas, but it can carry the feeling forward. It can remind someone of a morning on the flats, a fish disappearing beneath the surface or the particular blue of the water at the end of a long day.
Love My Oceans is where those two worlds meet: fine art and the everyday life of people who feel most like themselves near the water.
Explore the art you can wear →
This Love My Oceans story was inspired by and adapted from the 2017 Drake Magazine feature “Meeting in the Thin Space.” Read the original feature for the complete story of the Blackfly Lodge gathering and all five participating artists.
