Marty Shubert Joins Chesapeake Focus: A Test Pilot’s Chesapeake on Canvas

I’m announcing that oil painter Marty Shubert has joined Chesapeake Focus as our second featured artist, and that ten of his limited edition prints are available now at chesapeakefocus.com.

Who Marty Shubert Is

Marty spent 39 years as a Bell Helicopter test pilot, including testing the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. He retired as one of Bell’s senior test pilots. He’s been painting the Chesapeake’s species and waterways in oil ever since.

His technique draws on the Dutch Masters tradition — layered oil glazes built up over time to achieve a depth of color and detail that’s difficult to achieve any other way. The anatomical accuracy in his work is exact: fin rays, gill plates, individual feather barbs, water surface tension. This is not decorative wildlife art. It’s documentation with a brush.

The precision makes sense given his background. A test pilot flying an aircraft that had never been tested before has to understand systems at a level where small errors matter. Marty brings that same standard to his painting.

The Limited Edition Prints

Ten of Marty’s paintings are now available as numbered limited edition fine art prints. Current subjects include:

• Striped bass (rockfish)
• Blue crabs
• Red drum (channel bass)
• Great blue herons
• Royal terns
• Osprey with Rockfish

Each print is archival quality and produced in a numbered limited run. When a run closes, it doesn’t reopen. The edition sizes are set before printing; once they’re gone, they’re gone.

You can see Marty’s full portfolio and artist background at his artist profile on Chesapeake Focus. His limited edition prints are available at chesapeakefocus.com/collections/limited-edition.

Why This Fits

Chesapeake Focus launched with the goal of building a collective — multiple artists, multiple media, a serious and growing archive of Bay life. Marty’s work extends that into oil painting, and into the aquatic species that define the Bay’s identity as a fishery and ecosystem: rockfish, blue crabs, red drum. These are the species that people on this water know by name.

Adding his work to the collective is exactly what Chesapeake Focus is supposed to be.

— Ryan Lott, Founder, Chesapeake Focus