Card Sharks (Large)

“Card Sharks” is a collaboration painting by Wyland and Steve Diossy. Steve had the following story to tell about these first collaborations with Wyland.

“Card Sharks” is a companion piece to “Luck Be A Lady”. The mermaid from the previous piece had all the luck, she’s taken her winnings in gold coins and gone away, so now the characters are gambling with sand dollars which is their usual currency (or – current-sea?)

In this piece, you are on the opposite side of the table, so whereas in “Luck Be A Lady” you were playing as the octopus, now you are looking at him. The octopus is the dealer in this turn – dealing all the cards at once and making good use of his eight arms. He’s also holding onto a bottle of his prized possession; Wyland’s “Go Deep” rum.

As the piece is called “Card Sharks”, we had to incorporate a few different sharks into the mix. You are playing as a shark too and it seems like you’ve had a good game! You’ve got the highest winnings so far, and the hammerhead across from you is doing pretty well too.

Wyland did such a beautiful job with his characters and the background – he added a lot of light to the piece. Again, the idea with this piece is that Wyland’s characters and my characters are mingling; Wyland’s porpoise is in there too, and he’s sitting next to his punk shark. This shark is wearing a human tooth for a necklace, and he’s drinking a bloody mary. The moray eel is getting between the two of them and trying to be a part of the game. On the other side of the punk shark the turtle, again representing Willie Nelson, is back at the table.

The Mad Mahi is to the left of the piece – he represents me and since I’m a big coffee drinker, I had to give him some “Castaway Coffee”. Next to him is the tiger shark – he’s the old-school card shark and he has a confused look on his face – that’s because he’s holding two queens of hearts which is extremely rare, so he’s trying to figure out if there’s a problem with the deck of cards or if someone is cheating. The jolly green manatee next to him doesn’t have a mean bone in his body – he’s just a fun-natured good guy, and he’s amused by the jellyfish that is floating by him. The hammerhead is concerned by the jellyfish and also wondering why it is stealing a card.

We wanted to give the characters in a different location for this piece – we thought they might want to switch it up after the mermaid took all their gold, so for this one they are inside the sunken pirate ship from “Luck Be A Lady”.

Click here to see the companion collaboration piece “Luck Be A Lady“