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| Many of my private meditations begin with an appreciation of what we humans call the "animal world". Many thousands of years ago when humans first began to express themselves in artistic terms, the images that were portrayed in chalk and charcoal and pigment on the walls of caves were those of animals. Of course, no one can know the reasons or circumstances that motivated those first artists to choose animals as their subjects but I can imagine that as they observed the animals and their lives they saw obvious similarities and came to understand themselves better. The hunt, the kill, the feast and the famine were all centered in the relationship between humans and other animals. As we wonder where we came from and why we are here, we cannot help but believe that there is some clue hidden in the lives of the other animals. They are beautiful and magnificent and we have derived life and death from them for many, many millennia. We are in fact linked to them in a most primal and fundamental way. Images of animals still move us and we still search for the answers to life's great mysteries in the wonder of life in the animal world.
Another inspiration is the human form. As a phrase it conjures images as individual and specific as every person on the planet. Perhaps it is a famous painting or perhaps the cover of a magazine. It may be a mental picture of someone you know or maybe some ideal body type. It is even conceivable that it brings to mind an image of yourself. It becomes a single mental point through which an infinite number of interpretive lines can be drawn. It is no wonder that the figure has become such an important vehicle of artistic expression for human cultures around the globe. It "embodies" all our hopes, aspirations and endeavors.
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