My Still Life Aviary and Plumigeri

Although enthralled by the enigmatic beauty and character of mounted aviary specimens, I never lost sight of man's hubris in turning these animals into replicas of themselves and the inherent irony in striving to achieve a kind of immortality for them by killing them. Doubly ironic, however, is that I have also never felt more deeply the wonder and beauty of our animal kin than in my close-up encounters with these mounted birds.