Domestic Animals

We don’t look at the natural world anymore, not much. Most often we see it at some remove. A vista point, a park, a trail. An arrangement. A diorama. Even nature photography has tropes and conventions that hold us at a distance. What’s more banal than a close-up of a flower? Or a long shot of a herd crossing a plain, side-lit by the rising sun? Technology offers ever more sophisticated simulacra of what we’re losing. Now you can buy a radio-controlled animatronic penguin (with real feathers). Resin-cast elephants stepping into unfamiliar terrain may be the only kind our children’s children will have... A review once described my work as “fleshy and tender.” That’s more or less what I’m after.