Marty Shubert: Test Pilot Turned Chesapeake Fine Artist
From Flight Test to Fine Art
Marty Shubert — artist, test pilot, and lifelong waterman.
Marty Shubert is originally from Denver, Colorado, but Southern Maryland has been home since 1997 — and it didn't take long for the region to get into his bones. From his home on the Potomac River, he's spent nearly three decades sailing, fishing, diving, and kayaking the Chesapeake watershed. These days, all of those experiences feed directly into his painting.
Before picking up a brush full-time, Marty spent 39 years flying military aircraft and 27 of those years as a test pilot. As a Bell Helicopter Experimental Test Pilot, he was deeply involved in the flight testing of the V-22 Osprey — and it's no coincidence that a painted osprey serves as his logo. He retired from that career in January 2020 and turned his full attention to the next chapter: art, fly fishing, and the Chesapeake.
That background matters. Test pilots are trained to observe with extreme care, to notice what others miss, and to document what they see with accuracy. Marty paints the same way. His subjects aren't impressions — they're studies, built on direct observation and deep familiarity with the natural world.
The Work: Anatomical Precision Meets Old-World Technique
Marty's body of work spans gamefish, shorebirds, Chesapeake landscapes, aircraft, and portraits. But it's his fish studies that perhaps best illustrate what sets his painting apart: the subjects are anatomically detailed down to the number of rays in the fins and the pattern of scales representative of each species. These aren't decorative fish — they're the real thing, rendered with the observational rigor of someone who has spent decades on the water pursuing them with a fly rod.
Red Drum — anatomical detail from fins to scales, painted from direct field study.
His technique is just as deliberate as his subject matter. Marty works in a layered oil method that draws comparison to the Dutch Masters. He begins each painting with a detailed sketch, then covers the full canvas in a dead-color underpainting — typically burnt umber or earth red thinned with turpentine. This reddish-brown foundation ensures that no bare canvas shows through later layers, even in areas of thin application. He works this stage with a combination of washes and dry brush techniques, establishing the full value range of the image before color ever enters the picture.
From there, he builds the painting through successive layers of transparent dark glazes — pigment mixed with linseed oil medium and turpentine — deepening the shadows and adding a three-dimensional quality to the forms. With each glaze, he works thicker, more opaque layers of lighter color into the wet surface, developing depth and pulling highlights forward. A final transparent glaze unifies the painting, and fine detailing is applied both into the wet glaze and after it has dried.
The Process, Step by Step
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01 Sketch & Composition Studio studies composed from multiple reference photos, collated into a single image that captures the essence of the subject. |
02 Dead-Color Underpainting Full canvas coverage in burnt umber or earth red, establishing value structure and ensuring no white canvas bleeds through later layers. |
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03 Transparent Oil Glazes Successive layers of dark glazes deepen shadow and add dimension. Lighter, more opaque color is worked in to build highlights progressively. |
04 Final Glaze & Detail A unifying transparent glaze brings the painting together, followed by fine detail work applied both wet and dry. |
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Portrait study — Marty's layered oil technique produces the same depth and luminosity whether painting fish, birds, or faces.
"My paintings tend to be done in the studio with thin washes of color that require I paint the image multiple times."
It's a slow, deliberate process — one that Marty tends to reserve for the winter months, when the fishing is quiet and the studio calls. Summer is for chasing stripers and bonefish. Winter is for painting them. There's a rhythm to it that mirrors the Chesapeake itself: seasonal, patient, and deeply connected to the water.
On the Water and Beyond
Belize Bonefish — painted from the Turneffe Atoll flats where Marty has fly fished for decades.
Marty is an avid fly fisherman with over 45 years in the sport. His passion for saltwater fly fishing — particularly for bonefish, permit, and red drum — has taken him from the flats of Turneffe Atoll in Belize to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the marshes and tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. He's also a scuba diver and sailor, and those experiences give his underwater scenes and waterscapes an authenticity that's hard to replicate from reference photos alone.
He is active in conservation through his membership in the Coastal Conservation Association of Maryland and the Turneffe Atoll Trust.
Why Chesapeake Focus
Marty Shubert's work is exactly what Chesapeake Focus was built to showcase. His paintings don't just depict the Bay — they come from someone who has lived on it, fished it, dived beneath it, and studied it with a test pilot's eye for decades. Every fin ray is counted. Every glaze is intentional. The result is art that is wild, local, and built to last — just like the watershed it celebrates.
We're proud to welcome Marty as one of our featured artists, and we look forward to bringing his work into homes through fine art prints produced with the same commitment to quality that defines his originals.
Featured Works by Marty Shubert
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