Observation is most important for creative artists, it doesn’t matter where you are suddenly there before you is an image that needs to be captured either by a photograph or quickly sketched. Either way I have to remember what I have seen in order to use that image in part or in whole in one of my creations. I have a huge library of images, some still have yet to be used but none are wasted because they inspire me to places I may have been or visited and conjure the feelings I need for creative expression.

I have been able to travel too in my quest for original designs. In 2003 I was fortunate to visit Ecuador in South America, there high in the Andes, the Quichua Artists of Tigua, Chimbacuchu, the land of the Condor I saw wonderful expressions of art painted by the natives on goat hide and as wooden masks. The light was amazing, the colors vivid, my travels took me in the footsteps of Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands see www.darwinfoundation.org there in the biological isolation of the Galapagos a visit to these protected islands with their volvanic formations , rocky shores and the confluence of warm and cold currents that have led to an amazing variety of habitats and species, from giant tortoises to tiny finches from cold water penguins to tropical coral.

Nowhere else on Earth can such concepts of species be seen so clearly making this living laboratory one of the planets greatest treasures.