Oyster Portraits
(Oyster paintings are on exhibit at The Gallery at Sheafe, Prescott Park, Portsmouth, NH now through August 23, 2026)
Shaped by Water
Every oyster begins with the same basic plan. No two become alike.
My husband and I are partners in a small oyster farm in the Bellamy River, part of New Hampshire’s Great Bay estuary. We raise our oysters in mesh bags held in cages, lifting, sorting, and tumbling them as they grow.
The river feeds them. The tides move through them. Their shells are shaped by the conditions of the estuary, by contact with one another, and by the ordinary accidents of growth. Over time, each develops its own particular form.
After the oysters are harvested, I save the shells that seem to have a presence of their own. Some are graceful. Some are battered. Some are strange, comic, elegant, or stubborn-looking.
I place each one under a single light and paint it as I might paint a face.
These are not idealized oysters. They are portraits of individuals shaped by circumstance.
The Still Life
Still-life painting asks us to look closely at things that are easily passed over: a piece of fruit, a folded cloth, a glass, a shell.
Removed from its usual surroundings and placed under a single source of light, an ordinary object becomes a small landscape of ridges, shadows, scars, and reflected color. The longer I look at an oyster shell, the less ordinary it becomes.
The form may be still, but the painting records a history—growth, weather, damage, repair, and time.
Named for Hurricanes
I give each oyster a name before I begin painting it.
Because an oil painting develops over many days, I often work on several oysters at once. Each shell stays in its own small labeled bag so I can keep track of which oyster belongs to which painting.
For oysters raised in the Bellamy River, I use names from Atlantic hurricanes. When I paint an oyster from another region—such as a Kumamoto from the Pacific coast—I look instead to storms associated with that part of the world.
The system began as a practical one, but the names came to feel fitting. Like oysters, storms develop from a recognizable pattern, yet no two take exactly the same form.
About the Names
Atlantic storm names are reused every six years—unless a storm is so deadly or destructive that its name is permanently retired.
Cleo (1964), Katrina (2005), and Sandy (2012) will never be used again.
Oysters at Work
Oysters do something remarkable simply by feeding.
They draw water across their gills and consume the microscopic algae suspended within it. In an estuary carrying too many nutrients from wastewater, fertilizer, and stormwater runoff, algae can grow so abundantly that the water becomes cloudier and less sunlight reaches the eelgrass below.
Eelgrass meadows provide shelter, feeding grounds, and nursery habitat for young fish and many other small creatures. Clearer water gives these underwater plants a better chance to grow.
As oysters feed, some of the nitrogen contained in the algae becomes part of their tissue and shells. When farmed oysters are harvested, that nitrogen leaves the estuary with them.
Our oysters will not save Great Bay single-handedly—an unreasonable burden for any mollusk—but they are quietly doing useful work every day.
Did you know?
- Under the right conditions, a single adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water in a day.
- Great Bay’s wild oyster population fell from more than 25 million adults in 1993 to about 1.25 million in 2000. Today, it has rebounded to roughly 7 million—and restoration work continues.
Farm to Frame
Raising oysters has changed the way I look at the river. Painting them is another way of paying attention.
Each portrait begins with an oyster in the Bellamy. Its shell comes to my studio, where I study the particular form made by its life in the river.
The paintings, prints, and cards carry that story a little farther—from the estuary, to the farm, to the studio, and finally into the world.
Thank you for noticing.
(Oyster paintings are on exhibit at The Gallery at Sheafe, Prescott Park, Portsmouth, NH now through August 23, 2026)