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Fossils
softground etching prints

While studying human anatomy in a figure drawing class, I became fascinated with the possibilities in fantastic animal anatomy. The next semester, an open-assignment printmaking class allowed me to apply my ideas.
The fossil-like style is based on the famous Archaeopteryx fossil found in Berlin and other examples of that kind in which the animals were buried in mud. These fossils are usually complete skeletons of small animals, which have bones too delicate to chip out of the rock. They very often have broken bones and are twisted in strange positions.
Many artists simply "glue" parts onto magical creatures, giving quatrupeds six or eight limbs without muscle or bone to support them. These studies consider how such creatures could actually have been constructed.