Coming to Nature is a kind of religious pilgrimage for me, though I am not particularly religious. I work from photographs that I take of my subjects. I am not trying to reproduce the photograph but rather a transformation of the sense of sight to get the viewer closer to what the photo cannot reach. I often make icons of the animals I have come to know. An icon is an image of someone that is venerated. It is used as an aid to devotion. For me the making of them has an inexplicable and infectious magic that permeates the final work.