Cub

Cub, oil on  wood, 16"x12", 2013

Most waking hours I'm consumed with the Specimen Series.  I've become obsessed with collecting information on the topic of animal specimen preservation, specifically the spaces where these animals now exist.  I'm up to my eyeballs in photos, collection visit time, books, and documentaries on the subject.  I feel like the information itself can be tagged and sorted into shallow drawers to make a collection all of it's own.  

I want to see animal specimens in a different way, stripped of the space around them in order to develop a better understanding of their appeal.  It is impossible to render something completely void of an environment but what happens when you take oh let's say a cub in a jar or a stuffed moose head and place them in a blank environment?    

What does it all mean?  Where to next?  Dioramas?  

Epic-scale paintings?  Sculptural curio cabinets?

Step right up!  Before your very eyes - BEHOLD! - the smallest cabinet of curiosities in existence!  I've begun a collection of my own - some skulls and bones, a leaf wing butterfly, a mudbug, some ammonite, etc.