Taxidermy, which is the act of preparing, stretching and mounting animal skins for exhibit, can be seen as having metaphorical implications regarding my position as a still-life painter. As objects, both paintings and taxidermic animals are a type of skin stretched across a support to create a field of vision. This field, or surface, is then used to construct a series of visual reference points that give a viewer a sense of depth.  In painting, this dimension is created through a sequence of brush marks that signify the way light engulfs an object in space. In the case of taxidermy however, depth is realized through a series of object relations, such as the connections between animal furs, glass eyes and rubber tongues.