Nick Mayer is a nature artist who creates detailed illustrations of fish and marine life, combining real artistic skill with a deep passion for conservation. In this episode he joins me to talk about how he went from a career in the video-game industry to pursuing art full time, the childhood obsession with fish identification books that set the whole thing in motion, and why he believes art can be a powerful tool for connecting people to the natural world.
Nick Mayer is a nature artist who specializes in detailed illustrations of fish and marine life. He worked in the video-game industry before moving to full-time art, and his work serves both conservation organizations and individual collectors who appreciate the intersection of art and the natural world.
Nick creates detailed, scientifically informed illustrations of fish and marine life. He describes balancing artistic interpretation with accuracy so the work is both beautiful and faithful to the species, which is part of why it appeals to collectors and conservation groups alike.
Nick describes building his art on the side while still working in the video-game industry, then making a considered decision about timing before going full time. He talks honestly about the business side of leaving a stable career to pursue something he loved.
Nick describes a childhood obsession with fish identification books, which became more than reference material for him. He explains how that early fascination shaped both his understanding of marine life and the style he brings to his illustrations today.
Yes. Nick describes creating work used by conservation organizations and institutions to help educate the public about marine species. He talks about how art can serve a purpose beyond decoration when it helps people connect with the natural world.
I loved this conversation because it is about someone who found a way to combine several passions into one meaningful career. We do not talk enough about the business side of chasing what you love, and Nick is honest about what it actually took. I also wanted to hear how a guy turns a childhood obsession with fish books into a living celebrating the creatures he has studied his whole life.
Before Nick ever painted professionally, he was the kid lost in fish identification books. He described how those books became portals into the underwater world and how that early obsession shaped everything he makes now. Hear him connect childhood to career in the episode.
For years Nick worked in an industry that had nothing to do with fish, and the pull toward art kept growing. He was candid about the calculations and the timing that gave him the confidence to leave. If you have ever thought about turning a passion into a living, this is the part to hear. Listen to that section.
Nick does not just make pretty pictures. When he creates work for conservation groups and institutions, accuracy is part of the job, and he takes that responsibility seriously. He walked me through how he balances artistic choices with getting the details right. Press play to hear how he thinks about it.
The day after we talked, what stuck with me was Nick's understanding that art can be more than decoration. When he talks about illustrating for conservation groups, you can hear how seriously he takes accurate representation. That kind of attention to detail matters whether you are making art or chasing fish.
If you have ever thought about how to turn a passion into a livelihood, or you just appreciate the natural world, listen to the whole thing.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Nick Mayer is a nature artist who specializes in detailed illustrations of fish and marine life. After working in the video-game industry, he transitioned to full-time art, combining his technical skills with a lifelong passion for nature and fishing. His work serves conservation organizations, institutions, and collectors who appreciate the intersection of art and environmental stewardship, and his childhood fascination with fish identification books laid the foundation for a career bridging aesthetic beauty and the natural world.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 836: Artist Nick Mayer Shares His Love of Nature Through Art, with Nick Mayer.
Tom Rowland: What's going on, everybody? We have an awesome episode for you today. Nick Mayer is an artist, and our paths have crossed many times without ever actually meeting one another, in Key West, in Alaska, all over the place. Nick has done a lot of things and had many near-death experiences. He's not here to brag about those things, but just to talk about them, and he tells some really amazing stories about how these experiences have influenced what he does for a living, realizing that every day is a gift and that you need to do exactly what you love. If that resonates with you, you definitely want to listen to this episode. And if you're a wrestler, there is a lot of wrestling talk in here too, not pro wrestling, but amateur wrestling, and what it teaches about life and work ethic. So, Nick Mayer, coming up.
Nick Mayer: Hi, I'm Nick Mayer. I'm an artist.
Tom Rowland: Nick, man, how are you doing this morning?
Nick Mayer: I'm pretty good. Yourself?
Tom Rowland: Doing great, man. I'm glad to have you on here. We have a lot of cool things to talk about. I've been reading through all of your stuff and looking at your art, and, man, you've got a lot of cool stories.
Nick Mayer: Thanks so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.
Tom Rowland: Thank you. Where are you living right now?
Nick Mayer: I'm actually in Vermont, believe it or not. It's kind of a running joke around here that, despite the fact that most of my art depicts saltwater species, I'm landlocked in the hills of Vermont. I'm also a big deer hunter.
Tom Rowland: How's the deer season been so far?
Nick Mayer: Well, it's just about to get started here. Bow season's already started, but I'm mainly a rifle hunter. It's starting to get cold, and that's what kind of gets everybody thinking about deer season.
Tom Rowland: Do you think that the distance from the ocean, and from the saltwater species, since I see you're doing a lot of tarpon and warm-water species, helps your art? Have you ever thought about that? When you go on a fishing trip and get a lot of photographs and motivation for your next series of paintings, and then you retreat to Vermont, does that put you in a more creative spot? Or do you think you'd be more creative if you were right by the ocean, next to the species you're painting?
Nick Mayer: That's a really good point, I never thought about that before. But one of my favorite species to fish for around here is musky, and because they're right outside my doorstep, I kind of take them for granted. I grew up in Rhode Island fishing for striped bass, and when a species is right there, you tend to take it for granted. I think it very well could be that going on a trip gives you these great memories that become inspiration for creative work.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I can see that. I really think that applies to my life too in some ways. Putting a little distance between yourself and what you're trying to create seems to put you in a creative space you might not be in otherwise. Maybe that's just taking the species that are right there for granted. If I think about a trip I've taken to Australia or Christmas Island, you see things you've never seen before and they leave an indelible memory. Whereas a mahi is a beautiful fish, every bit as colorful as a triggerfish you'd see on Christmas Island, but because it's rare to see, it seems to inspire more. That's something I wanted to ask you about, because I printed something off your website. I'm looking at drawings, sketches you made as a kid, in 1975. A whale sketchbook drawing, a helmet diver sketchbook drawing, creatures sketchbook drawing, all circa 1975. Those look just about like the drawings I made when I was a kid. Then I go to when you're in college, and something happened, because those drawings are unbelievable, so precise, so accurate, so detailed. What happened? How did you get so much better?
Nick Mayer: Well, my dad was an art professor, and my mom was a microbiologist, so I guess I was influenced by both sides of things. I studied marine biology, that's the path I originally decided to go down. I didn't think I'd ever be able to make a living as an artist. It was something I had always loved to do, but I never really thought of it as a career option. Science just seemed like a much more stable way to go. I grew up in Michigan for my first five years and then mostly in Rhode Island.
My dad was a college professor, and at the end of the school year the kids would leave all their supplies behind, and he'd bring home boxes of art supplies. So I had a never-ending supply of art materials in my house. He taught me how to draw and gave me pointers, but it wasn't like he pushed me to be an artist. I just always was drawing, even back in elementary school, doodling in my notebooks. Kids would ask me to draw them a picture, and the teacher would have me do the bulletin boards and collages. I've always been interested in aquatic things and interested in art and doodling, and that's how I sort of make sense of things. When we're trying to figure something out, like something wrong with the house, I have to make a drawing of it to sort out how the plumbing goes, or wherever it is. It's just how I understand things visually.
Tom Rowland: That's super cool. Everybody has a different way of putting it together. Something definitely happened between when you were a kid in 1975 and later. I don't know if we're close to the same age. When I was a kid, they had those art tests in the back of magazines where you'd draw Mickey Mouse or something, and I would be so inspired to do that, and it didn't look very good. I never became an artist. I never had anyone show me how to do it at all. Maybe having the art supplies around and seeing a lot of art made a big difference for you.
Nick Mayer: Well, thank you. I kind of think it's like anything else, to a degree, where you just do it enough and you keep getting better and better at it. Kind of like fishing, you put your hours in, or like deer hunting, you just have to log the time, and then eventually get some success.
Tom Rowland: Well, in order to get to know you a little better, we're going to go to the hot seat. I've got a bunch of either-or questions, kind of fast-paced. Don't put a lot of thought into them, we'll just see where we go. Are you ready? Spinning rod, conventional, or fly rod?
Nick Mayer: Fly rod.
Tom Rowland: Freshwater or saltwater?
Nick Mayer: Saltwater.
Tom Rowland: Would you have a reptile as a pet?
Nick Mayer: Yeah, I do. I've had lots of them, snakes and other things. I've had a lot of odd stories, just rescuing them. I had a friend whose girlfriend's ex-boyfriend left a python in her basement, and nobody knew it was there, so I took it in. I've actually had some venomous rattlesnakes in my apartment at one time.
Tom Rowland: You win. I think there may have been one other guest who's had a reptile as a pet or would like to. Now, we've had some python hunters on the podcast, but they don't keep them as pets, they're getting rid of them, though they're very comfortable with them. One of your favorite bands?
Nick Mayer: Foo Fighters.
Tom Rowland: Instagram or Twitter?
Nick Mayer: Instagram.
Tom Rowland: One thing you're afraid of?
Nick Mayer: I don't mean to sound like a wuss, but I'm not too fond of leeches.
Tom Rowland: Me either. Gamakatsu, TMC, Owner, or Mustad?
Nick Mayer: Owner.
Tom Rowland: Office, Friends, or Parks and Rec?
Nick Mayer: Parks and Rec.
Tom Rowland: One piece of technology outside your phone that you rely on heavily?
Nick Mayer: My MacBook Pro.
Tom Rowland: Favorite fish?
Nick Mayer: GT.
Tom Rowland: Good choice. Coffee, tea, or energy drink?
Nick Mayer: Coffee.
Tom Rowland: Mountains or beaches for vacation?
Nick Mayer: Beaches.
Tom Rowland: Favorite fishing movie or TV show?
Nick Mayer: Let's see, Jaco Lucas on YouTube.
Tom Rowland: Nice, he's a former guest, we've had him on a couple of times, he's always got good stories. Winter Olympics or Summer Olympics?
Nick Mayer: Winter.
Tom Rowland: Favorite pro wrestler of all time?
Nick Mayer: Can I go with a folk-style, college wrestler instead? Even better for this podcast. Kale Sanderson.
Tom Rowland: That would be a very good choice. If you could have a fishing, or hunting, themed superpower, what would it be?
Nick Mayer: The ability to hover.
Tom Rowland: That would be a good one, like a drone. You kind of already have that, with the drones you use. Sunrise or sunset?
Nick Mayer: Sunset.
Tom Rowland: Country, classic rock, or rap?
Nick Mayer: Rock.
Tom Rowland: Pancakes or waffles?
Nick Mayer: Waffles.
Tom Rowland: Early bird or night owl?
Nick Mayer: Night owl.
Tom Rowland: River, lake, or backcountry?
Nick Mayer: Backcountry.
Tom Rowland: What would you consider one of the best catches of your career?
Nick Mayer: Oh boy, let's see, a sailfish on a fly in Guatemala, I'll go with that.
Tom Rowland: That's a good one. A movie that makes you laugh?
Nick Mayer: The Jack Black movie where he's the wrestler in Mexico.
Tom Rowland: Nacho Libre.
Nick Mayer: Nacho Libre, yeah.
Tom Rowland: That one's good. Text or calls?
Nick Mayer: Calls.
Tom Rowland: The last book you remember reading, or your favorite book?
Nick Mayer: I'm reading some Raymond Carver short stories right now.
Tom Rowland: East Coast or West Coast? East Coast or West Coast of Florida?
Nick Mayer: West Coast is what I'm exploring right now.
Tom Rowland: Early fishing memory or trip that made you a lifetime angler or hunter?
Nick Mayer: My first striped bass on a fly, when I was about twelve, it completely blew my mind. I never expected it would happen. That was in Rhode Island. I had a few buddies I'd fished with since I could walk, and we mostly fished largemouth bass and catfish with spinning rods. Then we started getting into saltwater, fishing this rocky point. I brought my fly rod and tied up a Lefty's Deceiver just by looking at a book, one of Lefty Kreh's books, and I walked down the beach from those guys and started casting. I think I spooked some silversides close to the rocks, and a striper started busting right in front of me. I threw the fly out there and it nailed it right away, and somehow I landed the fish. It was a seven-weight fiberglass rod from Kmart with a rinky-dink reel, and I didn't let the fish run, I just held on. I didn't know what to do and somehow landed it. My friends couldn't even believe me, I was screaming, I held it up in the air and then let it go, and they said that was a piece of Styrofoam, gone.
Tom Rowland: And that did it, that hooked you for life right there. A place you'd like to visit?
Nick Mayer: Seychelles.
Tom Rowland: Me too. Audio, paper, or Kindle for books?
Nick Mayer: Paper.
Tom Rowland: Chocolate or vanilla?
Nick Mayer: Vanilla.
Tom Rowland: One piece of advice that has served you well?
Nick Mayer: Don't give up.
Tom Rowland: I like it. Where's that from? Who's the don't-give-up inspiration?
Nick Mayer: My wrestling coach.
Tom Rowland: Nice. So you wrestled in high school? Did you wrestle in college?
Nick Mayer: Just in high school. I wasn't a superstar. My son was, I coached him, and he became a two-time state champion. But wrestling just changed my life. I was the hardest working guy on the team, and I wasn't the most successful guy on the team, but it taught me a lot of good life skills for sure.
Tom Rowland: Man, so important for my life too. I think about the life skills and lessons I learned on the wrestling mat as probably more valuable than what I learned in high school, definitely more valuable than what I learned in college, and probably attributable to a tremendous amount of any success I've had in any endeavor beyond that. I could never say enough nice things about wrestling. How was it when you had kids? How many kids do you have?
Nick Mayer: I have two boys.
Tom Rowland: Did they both wrestle?
Nick Mayer: No, just my older son.
Tom Rowland: So did you introduce them to wrestling, or did he go to it on his own?
Nick Mayer: Well, as someone who had been so affected by the sport, I wanted to just throw him right in, but my wife said he's got to want to do it himself. So we introduced him to it, and I was really tickled when he decided he wanted to do it. I started coaching him and ended up coaching him all the way through, from first grade, and he did wrestle in college.
Tom Rowland: You had the transition of being his coach and then having to be just another parent at some point when he graduated to real coaches, because I did the same thing. I coached my kids when they were young and then all the way into high school, and then it's like, okay, now you need real coaches. So here's a question I wish I had put on the hot seat: do you think it's more difficult to be a wrestler, a wrestling coach, or a wrestling parent, and why?
Nick Mayer: Oh boy. It's definitely toughest to be a wrestler, because you're the one sucking the weight, wrecking your body, and giving it your all every day in practice. That's harder, physically, than anything a coach or a parent's going to do. But coaching really has its challenges too, dealing with parents, and the level of self-control that wrestling teaches you really comes into play when you're a coach and you have to deal with a bad call from a ref or a parent who thinks their kid can't do any wrong. But I'd have to say the wrestler has the toughest job.
Tom Rowland: I actually would go the opposite way. Because I was the wrestler, then the wrestling coach, and then I had to be just the wrestling parent, and over the difference of those three, as the wrestler you have the most control over what's happening. You can work harder, you can do the work necessary to get better, it's all up to you, and that's one of the biggest lessons wrestling teaches anyone, that this is all you. It's like extreme ownership at the extreme level for a young kid in these competitions. You're going out there against one other person, and it's all you, and what happens on that mat is a direct result of what's happened the last couple of months or years. So as the wrestler, you have the most control. As the coach, you have less control, but you're still close to it and can maybe have a little influence, or at least feel like you do. And then as a wrestling parent, sitting back there on the bleachers like all the other wrestling parents, there's nothing you can do at all. I found that to be the hardest, even harder than it was with my wife, who learned how to do it, when to scream and when to be quiet. But with other wrestling parents who have never been to a wrestling match, asking what's going on, I would just go sit in the corner as far away as possible. I found it very difficult, but it's interesting to hear the different perspectives. I hope one day I'll be a wrestling grandparent, and maybe that'll be harder or easier.
Nick Mayer: I totally agree with you. My first college wrestling tournament, I'm in the stands, and sometimes I did scream, and I'm like, no, you shouldn't be doing that, let the coach yell, tell him what move he should do. It was so hard.
Tom Rowland: It really is incredibly hard. When I was guiding daily in Key West, I'd run across people who came on the boat who were really good fishermen, obviously very athletic, and I would always ask about their athletic background. There was an uncanny number of anglers who had been into tournaments and were way better than average, and a big percentage of them were wrestlers. I started thinking, that is so interesting, I wonder what it is about wrestling and technical fishing, like fly fishing or technical bait fishing for permit and bonefish, that draws these people to the sport. I wonder why it's such a big percentage of people who like one sport and the other.
Nick Mayer: That's a good question too. I agree with you, there's a lot of precision involved with wrestling. You've got to put your right foot here, it can't be there, you've got to grab the guy's heel, you can't grab his calf. It's the same with presenting a fly or bait, it can't be ten inches this way or you're going to spook the fish. There's that element of precision.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I see that for sure, and I always kind of thought wrestling is physical chess. You've heard coaches and different people describe the sport that way, and it is. There's a lot of strategy, a lot of precision, a smaller person can defeat a larger person with better technique. You can just see kids who aren't as strong as other kids whoop them because it's very technical. And in wrestling you benefit from your work ethic and how hard you're willing to practice and drill, and you also benefit from your coaches. It's the same in that type of fishing. If someone is willing to put in the time to practice casting, watch videos, and seek out the best fishing guide they can learn from, it's almost the same process a wrestler goes through to get really good. And when you stop wrestling, unless you're going to the UFC, that competitive part of your life that you don't even realize was there, you're glad it's over at first, but a couple months later something's missing. I think a lot of wrestlers have to find something, whether it's CrossFit, fishing, hunting, or archery, to apply those same steps of practice and a big challenge.
Nick Mayer: Yeah, I definitely felt like that. My freshman year of college, when I didn't wrestle in college, I went to Brown, a Division I school, and it was recruit-only, so they didn't really take walk-ons. I just felt this hole in my life. I remember calling my high school coach, just wanting to talk to him, and after a while he was like, what'd you call me for? He didn't really get it. I was just like, I don't know, I missed it.
Tom Rowland: I think that's real common. Well, let's talk about your art a little bit, you've got so many talking points here. You've done commercial fishing, recreational fishing, in order to get ideas for your art. How does all this start, and how do you get from where you started to being the artist you are today?
Nick Mayer: Well, my interest in fishing started when I was a little kid, back in the eighties. There were no such things as hover parents, and us kids would just go to this little polluted frog pond near our house that all the kids would hang out at, with no parents around, catching turtles. My nickname was the turtle man when I was a little kid because I caught so many turtles. There was a culvert, a grate, at Willett Pond in Riverside, Rhode Island, where water from the pond went down over a waterfall underneath the street, and I'd squeeze between the bars of that grate and jump down the waterfall into this crazy little cement room full of snapping turtles, and I'd catch them. There was a motorcycle gang that would hang out in the parking lot, but nobody got hurt, nobody drowned, and we'd be in the mud every day catching stuff with no issues. I think that's where it all started, with that catching, that exploring on my own. That segued into spin fishing, mostly for bass, and since I was somewhat close to the coast, my fishing buddies and I started moving into saltwater and then fly fishing.
Nick Mayer: I was introduced to fly fishing through a guy at the Orvis company in Manchester, Vermont, just a little way south of where I live now. My uncle, who I'd go visit in the summertime, was a college teacher up in Bennington, Vermont, and he took me to the Orvis flagship store there. I happened to meet this guy, Gordy Hines, who's actually an artist himself now. He worked in sales for a number of hunting and fishing venues for years, and now he's in Destin, Florida. He kind of took me under his wing and really introduced me to fly fishing. He's just a really generous guy, gave me all kinds of gear, and taught me how to fish. That's what really got me inspired to fly fish.
Tom Rowland: That's cool. Then how do you end up in Alaska?
Nick Mayer: So then I decided to study fisheries in college. I had an awesome time studying marine biology, I went to Brown, but did some specific marine biology studies at Duke, and that really got me inspired to work at the population biology level with fisheries. I got an internship working for Alaska Fish and Game the summer before my senior year, and went out to Kodiak Island, which was an adventure. Everywhere you went, you went by floatplane, because there were no roads anywhere, it was either boat or floatplane. All those entry-level fisheries jobs, when you're fresh out of college, are seasonal. We were doing research on the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on salmon, which believe it or not actually helped them out, because it stopped commercial fishing and allowed all the salmon to get back into the rivers instead of being caught. So that's how I ended up in Alaska, and that was a seasonal job. Then that ended, and I'd already done some commercial fishing in Rhode Island, so I started walking the docks and got on a commercial purse seiner up there.
Tom Rowland: I would imagine the wrestling background came in handy in the commercial fishing industry, that's hard work no matter what you're fishing for. Maybe the easiest commercial fishing is stone crabbing in the Florida Keys, I've always thought that'd be a great TV show, you've got the deadliest catch and then the easiest catch. But even stone crabbing is rough and tough. What kind of commercial fishing were you doing in Rhode Island?
Nick Mayer: I worked on a clam dredger. Actually, every commercial fishing boat I worked on, I basically had a near-death experience. It was about a 148-foot-long giant metal boat with a monstrous metal cage, maybe thirty feet by twenty feet, that we'd drag along the bottom, dredging up everything, so environmentally incorrect. It would get raised up on an A-frame and dump everything onto a conveyor belt, and because I was the new guy, the lowest guy on the totem pole, I had the first conveyor belt. This old salt came up to me one day and said there's a monkfish in that cage, go take a gaff and get it. So I climbed up there and gaffed the fish out, then went back to my job. I was the only guy on the whole deck for some reason, and all of a sudden all the tables in front of me exploded into splinters. I had no idea what happened, I was just sitting there dumbfounded, all these milk crates gone, this plywood table all gone. Everybody started running around, there was a giant metal cable that held that cage, and it broke, and when the cage fell in the water the cable came by me and vaporized those tables. That was a close call for sure.
Tom Rowland: Oh man. Did you continue with that, or was that the first indication it might be time to move on?
Nick Mayer: Well, that boat, I realized not everybody on it was sober at all times, including the captain. Plus we lost the cage, so we couldn't fish anymore. So I moved on from that.
Tom Rowland: And compare that to the kind of commercial fishing you were doing in Alaska.
Nick Mayer: In Alaska, I was just at that time in my life, in my twenties, all in for adventure, I didn't care. I just wanted to go out on the high seas, it was the biggest rush for me. I kind of felt like being on that commercial boat was almost like being on a football team, you had these plays where one guy would come around with the tractor skiff, throw you a line, and you had to clip it on this thing, then run over and pull this quick release, and this thing goes shooting out, a whole sequence of things we all had to do together as a team. We would work twenty-one hours a day, and the sleep deprivation would accrue over time, sleeping three hours a night with a crew of just four, mostly me on deck with one other native Aleut guy because the captain was always in the bridge and the other guy was in the tractor skiff. So I'd spend weeks at a time with this one guy, and it drove you crazy.
Tom Rowland: Was everybody young, or were there a couple older guys?
Nick Mayer: The captain was in his fifties. The rest of us, the other guy who worked on deck with me, was probably in his twenties too. The guy in the skiff, we called him Haywire because that was spray-painted on the skiff, and he wasn't all there either.
Tom Rowland: Man, that seems like a young man's job with all the sleep deprivation, I don't know how you'd do that for a career. At this point, were you still doing art while working like that, or did that go on the back burner?
Nick Mayer: That kind of was on the back burner, but I still have, right here in my studio, my sketchbook from Alaska. I kept a sketchbook while I was on the boat, and I think that might have been part of what kept my sanity, honestly. We'd have this sequence of events, set the net, and then have fifteen minutes to wait before doing it again, so there were little periods of downtime where you might try to get fifteen minutes of sleep, but the other guy had to watch to make sure he woke you up when it was time to go.
Tom Rowland: That's tough, man, tough life, commercial fishing in Alaska. I've talked to people who've come back from all different types of fishing, and it sounds like you were doing something different than what my friend was doing, but he showed me pictures of the whole front rail of the boat encased in ice that they'd have to knock off with sledgehammers. His job was throwing a hook to catch a buoy, and if he missed it, you might only get two or three tries, and the whole boat would have to turn around. When I saw him, he'd lost forty pounds and looked like the life had literally been sucked out of him, even after being home for weeks. I asked him what happened and he said, that's commercial fishing for you. Respect.
Nick Mayer: A lot of those guys make a lot of money in a short period of time, and then a lot of them go to Hawaii, since that's the closest tropical place for people coming from up there.
Tom Rowland: So after Alaska, you survived a near-death floatplane crash while caribou hunting in Labrador. You're like a cat, how many lives do you have left?
Nick Mayer: I don't know. I also fell overboard off that boat in Alaska. I think that's really what made me feel like I had a guardian angel. We blew a hydraulic hose and sprayed hydraulic fluid all over the deck, and we tried to mop the mess up, but the deck was still super slippery. I was doing that same sequence of tasks and slid all the way from one side of the deck to the other, backwards, and flipped over backwards off the boat into the water. My raincoat, which I didn't have a flotation device under, was buttoned up to my chin and filled up with air and floated me. I saw the stern of the boat going straight away from me because the captain didn't know I'd fallen in. Art, the other guy on deck, saw me and told the captain, but what I did was pull myself over to the other skiff, Haywire's, using a line hanging off it, and got into that boat. That was a close call. You didn't have much time before hypothermia set in, but I was pretty lucky and got into the boat pretty quick. I got back on deck, did some jumping jacks, and we had to finish that set before I went and changed my clothes.
Tom Rowland: See, that's what I'm talking about, the wrestling benefited you, going in soaking wet and being expected to finish the set, that sounds a lot like making weight, except it's hot instead of cold. So how many other near-death experiences have you had?
Nick Mayer: Well, I'm not here to brag about these things, I think honestly these experiences just made me realize that every day is a gift and you've got to do what you love, and that's sort of what eventually steered me to becoming a full-time artist. The caribou hunting, I had this absolutely phenomenal hunt up on the Labrador-Quebec border. Shortly after that, they closed caribou hunting in all of Canada, and it hasn't opened back up since as far as I know, because they had some kind of parasite that caused the population to crash. This was the barren-ground caribou, as opposed to woodland caribou, the ones that do the big migration. The way pilots navigate up there, in these planes that were literally from the fifties with no electronics, they're spinning wheels and pulling and pumping things to work the flaps and wings, and the only instrument this pilot had was a little suction-cup cell-phone mount on the windshield. So they basically use sight for navigation, and when you come into a big wall of clouds, they usually go along the edge, or land in a pond or lake and wait out the weather. We kept going along the edge of the clouds, and finally the pilot said, screw it, we're just going to go right through. I looked at the guy next to me, an ex-military helicopter pilot, and we kind of looked at each other. Then I looked at the dashboard and there was a red light that said fuel. I asked what was up with that, not realizing there were two fuel tanks and that was just the first one, but we were getting a little low on fuel and decided to go through the cloud anyway. All of a sudden it was like something from a movie, we're all looking through the windshield, I was in the seat right behind the pilot, and everything's just white, and then all of a sudden we see this rock face. The pilot turned the plane sideways, everybody's rifles and hunting gear come falling off onto one side of the plane, and we're all hanging on sideways. We did this bank, a ninety-degree turn. Had those clouds not cleared a second later, we'd have been smack into that cliff.
Tom Rowland: Wow, that's wild. How's your fondness for floatplanes and helicopters these days, do you like them or not?
Nick Mayer: I don't mind them. That was just one flight of many. In Alaska, people just use them like a bicycle or a car, to get from one place to another, the postman uses them to deliver mail and groceries.
Tom Rowland: So with all these near-death experiences, you touched on it, that's why you realize every day is a gift and to do what you love. At what point do you make a change in your life, come to that realization that you've been really lucky a couple times, and then what do you do?
Nick Mayer: Yeah, it gets a little more complicated because somewhere in there afterward, I met my wife and we settled down and had a family, and now I had a mortgage and a kid in college. So it wasn't like, I love to paint, I'm going to go try that. I had to be a little more strategic about it. I started the business on the side and kept growing it to the point where my wife and I had the conversation, and she really supported me and said I had to try it. So I took the plunge, and making a living as an artist has got to be the hardest thing anybody could want to do and actually do long term, but somehow it worked out, I just kept at it. I think it's been about twelve years now since I went full-time. I had grown the side business to the point where I thought I could make a living at it, but what I didn't realize is that once I was fully invested in it, not doing it as a side thing, there was another kind of growth factor that really made things take off. It was like the day after I gave my notice, someone called me and asked me to illustrate a book, and that was my first book project. It was really serendipitous.
Tom Rowland: Nice. So what was the other job you gave your notice to? What were you doing at that point?
Nick Mayer: That's kind of a complicated story, but I had worked in various science jobs, in marine biology and then environmental consulting. And then I was basically a personal assistant to a billionaire, managing different properties and doing all kinds of things. I just put so much of myself into that job that it was too much, too much of my life was invested in it, and it wasn't like I was building my own dream, I was building working towards someone else's dream. So I felt like I had to be more true to myself and try to build my own dream.
Tom Rowland: That's super cool, I love those stories. We talk to a lot of different people who decided at some point they wanted to be a fishing guide or open a store, in your case go full-time into art, or go full-time into some sort of athletics like some of these CrossFit athletes I've had on. They get to a point where it's never that their side gig is suddenly doing better than their real job, it almost always is that the side gig has shown some potential, and now you've got to jump. It's not that you don't need the job anymore, there's certainly situations like that for some people, but for the people who've told a similar story on this podcast, it's like, no, it was there, but it certainly wasn't the main gig, and there's a point where you have to jump, communicate with your wife and family, and ask yourself, can I really do this? And then it's that jump, and that's the most important part of the whole journey, that moment of saying, I'm doing it, I'm putting in my notice, and we're doing this for the good or the bad, whatever happens, I'm in. I love that it's been successful.
Nick Mayer: Thank you. Just curious, was that sort of a similar inflection point for you, when you went from guiding to the saltwater experience, that there was sort of a jump?
Tom Rowland: There have been many jumps. The first jump was deciding not to do the Western guiding anymore and only do the Florida guiding, but there's 365 days in Florida, and I own my own business, so every time I did a trip I was making more than I was out west, but you're still giving something up to do that. And then for a while, nobody knows who you are or cares, and you're just learning your way around, and you don't have enough money or business to really make it through the month. I think about this all the time, there was this moment talking to my wife where I said, man, I should really get a job, like as a waiter or bartender, because we didn't have enough money to make it through the whole month. And she was encouraging, like your wife was, saying she knew I could do this. And then it's like, no, what I need to do is not go get another job that takes me off the water, what I need to do is spend more time on the water, and I know that doesn't make any financial sense, and there's no way of knowing we're going to make it through the end of the month and pay the rent. But if I spend more time on the water, I believe I'm going to get the trips, and if I just get one more trip, that's eight nights of bartending. So you put in your time, you show up at the ramp first, you leave the ramp last, and sooner or later another one of these fishing guides is going to say, that kid's working pretty hard, I'm going to throw him a bone. And then somebody else does that, and you do a good job, and the next thing you know, you've built it up. Had I played it safe and been the bartender, there's nothing wrong with that, some people have to do that, but in this situation, my wife and I had just gotten married, no kids yet, and I thought, I know this doesn't make sense, but I would rather burn this thing to the ground than compromise on my dream. If we can't make it through the end of the month, we'll figure something else out. My dream is not to be a part-time fishing guide and a bartender, my dream is to be the best fishing guide in the Florida Keys, and that's a long way off, an impossible goal given my experience level at the time, but I know I'm not going to get there by being a part-time guide, so go all in. And then with the TV show, same kind of thing, as I continued to guide more and more, my client list got smaller and smaller, as generally happens with somebody doing well in that profession, you're only fishing with three, four, five, or six different people, but fishing more days than ever, each one taking fifty, sixty, a hundred days, and you're very fortunate to have clients like that, they become family. And then to give that up in pursuit of something else is tough, there's a lot of turmoil and introspective thinking. And going back to the wrestling deal, what wrestling has taught me in my life is that I'll bet on myself. I'm reluctant to bet on others because I don't know their work ethic or history, but I know that if it takes hard work to get there and I'm determined, I'll make that bet, because I know what wrestling has taught me about hard work and dedication, doing things you really don't want to do but doing them anyway, and like Mike Tyson says, everyone watching just says, look at that guy, he loves what he's doing. Not necessarily, it might be the worst day you've ever had, but you still love doing it, and that's a bet I'll make on myself. And that's obviously a bet you made on yourself too, knowing this artist life was going to be very difficult, but if it takes work and dedication, you were willing to make that bet.
Nick Mayer: Thanks, it really is. I love hearing the wrestling mindset and everything you've done. Sometimes with my daughter, I struggle to come up with stories that don't involve wrestling because she didn't wrestle, though she might now with the growth of women's wrestling, but it wasn't a thing for her, girls and boys are different, she wanted to do other things.
Tom Rowland: But I kind of struggle with teaching life lessons without wrestling, because both my boys wrestled, and with my wife, same thing you and your wife talked about, it's really important that they want to do it. But I had to override that a bit and say, what's really important in raising boys is that they learn the lessons I was fortunate enough to learn, so they're going to wrestle, and they may hate it, but they're going to be out there long enough to learn these lessons, and that's only a couple of years honestly, and then either you like it or you don't, and if you don't want to do it anymore after that, that's fine. But I wanted to introduce them to it and have them wrestle at least some, and it turns out both of them, in the end, enjoyed wrestling very much, though there were a lot of internal battles about whether they really liked it, because it is the toughest sport there is, and you're doing it at a time in your life where all your friends definitely aren't doing that unless they're wrestlers too. The closest thing was the swim team, the only other team practicing twice a day. I have a lot of great things to say about wrestling, and people who listen to this podcast who aren't wrestlers are probably tired of hearing it, but it's a mindset and a work ethic that's developed maybe as efficiently as anywhere, where everyone who does it for a certain amount of time is going to develop that work ethic.
Nick Mayer: I think especially in this day and age, that's such a valuable and unique thing. I see that in my son, before he could even legally work he was doing construction, putting a stack of shingles on his shoulder and crawling to the top of a roof, and I saw that work ethic right off the bat, and I know once that's in you, it's in you forever, you're in that wrestling brotherhood forever.
Tom Rowland: Yes. And what's interesting about wrestling is it's a very physical sport, and to a lot of people who don't know much about it, it's a brutal sport, but it's also a very cerebral sport, physical chess, as much strategy as anything. The really great wrestlers, like a Kale Sanderson, are super smart, not dumb brutes, but incredibly intelligent people learning about the physics of the human body and how the mind works, how you can get in someone else's mind and work on your own. It seems like a very brutal sport, but the things you learn there can be applied to anything. If you were a good wrestler, I feel like you could learn how to play the violin, or be a good guitarist, or a great fly fisherman. There's a process and procedure to getting good at anything, and wrestling, I won't say it's the best way by any stretch, but it's a very efficient way to learn how to get better at something. That's been very beneficial for me, knowing that if I want to get better at fishing or guiding or poling a boat or rowing a boat, I need to get out there and practice, and it helps if I have somebody who really knows how to do it show me, so I learn faster, but you've got to put in the work no matter what it is. That's pretty much what I learned from wrestling, and I love it. I want you to tell me your story about selling your first piece of art, because it happened in Key West, and I'm pretty sure I know exactly where. What was it like to sell your first piece of art, and why were you even in Key West?
Nick Mayer: Okay, so I'm sure you've heard of Sea Camp, right over at Pine. That was another place I worked that had a big influence on me, taking kids out and teaching about the coral reef, that was really rewarding, we'd go out to Looe Key, a beautiful spot. There was a school bus that was the staff office, and I set up a little station in there with a little desk and my paints, and I painted a piece, not too big, that fit in the little stall of the school bus, a tarpon over some turtle grass, and I took it down to Key West. I found a gallery called the Game Fish Gallery, I don't think it exists anymore.
Tom Rowland: But I remember it, I remember it, this is it, right, that's your painting.
Nick Mayer: Yeah, that's it. So I take it in there, and I didn't make very much money, I was again the bottom guy on the totem pole. I went in, and it was like something out of a movie, this young, inexperienced artist walks in, and they saw it and said, yeah, we want to take that, and I was shocked. I was expecting to go into a bunch of different galleries and get shot down, but they said, that's great, we'll hang it up, and then it sold. I can't even remember exactly how much it sold for, maybe around a thousand dollars or a little less, which for me at that time was a lot of money. I was like, are you serious? I couldn't believe that happened. That was kind of a turning point, because before that it was just something I did for fun, another expression of how much I loved fishing. Up here in the wintertime there's not a whole lot to do, so I'd make paintings of the fish, even though the fish weren't here anymore. But that was sort of an inflection point where I started thinking, jeez, I could actually possibly do this for a living.
Tom Rowland: That's awesome, man. A moment like that, looking back, how much confidence did that give you? Had you not gone down there and tried to sell that painting, do you think things would have been different? There are a couple of things where I look back and think, I don't even know why I did that, but that was a huge point in my life, and had that not happened, I don't know if I would have had the confidence or momentum to go on and do whatever happened after. But that seems like it was a really important moment.
Nick Mayer: Yeah, I probably didn't realize it at the time, but that was a real eye-opener, and then I started selling paintings on the side from there on out.
Tom Rowland: That's cool. Did that school bus have air conditioning in it?
Nick Mayer: No.
Tom Rowland: Oh man. Was that summertime work? I'd imagine it was covered in sweat, a school bus in the summertime would be sweltering.
Nick Mayer: It was a little bit in the shade, there were some palm trees over it, but still.
Tom Rowland: Big pond shade is like the Tom McGuane book, Ninety-two in the Shade. Ninety-two in a school bus. Well, Nick, it's been awesome to get to know you. I hope we can do this again on the podcast, we've probably barely scratched the surface on your art and what you're doing, but most people who listen to the podcast don't particularly like wrestling talk, so we have that going for us. There's a ton of wrestling fishermen who listen to this, they send me messages all the time saying they love the wrestling talk, or they wrestled, or their brother wrestles. There are a lot of people who do this type of fishing who are wrestlers or have been wrestlers or enjoy the sport. Like Clay Guida, my favorite UFC fighter, because he's a wrestler and also a crazy fisherman, do you know him, the Caveman?
Nick Mayer: I don't, I've got to check him out.
Tom Rowland: Oh yeah, he's in the Hall of Fame now. The funny thing about Guida is he loves wrestling, and he'll tell you wrestling saved his life and he learned all the same lessons we're talking about, and more, but he was just what he'd call a mediocre wrestler, not a state champion, he just loved it and had a good skill set. Then he went on to start fighting in the UFC and had over fifty fights there, with a tremendous wrestling base, and one of his hashtags is wrestling is life. I had the opportunity to fish with him a couple times, and he loves fishing as much as anybody I've ever been with.
Tom Rowland: Well, tell us, if somebody's interested in what you do and your art, how do they see more, buy more, how do they do it?
Nick Mayer: So it's nickmayerart.com, that's my website, the main place you can see my work. I've got a bunch of Florida species, redfish, tarpon, snook, bonefish, permit, and all kinds of other stuff too. That's kind of another part of my philosophy, my bigger mission with all of this is to connect people with nature. I feel like in this era of people being on their phones and in front of screens all the time, that's really important, but also introducing art into everyday life. Not everybody can afford an original painting to put on their wall, but having nature-inspired art on a phone case or a bag, things that come into everyday life, I feel like it helps connect people with nature.
Tom Rowland: I love it, I love it. Well, I've enjoyed the conversation, definitely, and I hope you guys will go check out his stuff, he's got some really beautiful stuff out there, so definitely check out his website. Alright, Nick, thanks so much, man, we'll do it again, we'll stay in touch.
Nick Mayer: Thanks so much, Tom, it was a pleasure, great conversation. Thanks for having me.
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