As we mature and prepare to take our places in society, we come under ever-increasing pressure to abandon our sense of wonder in favor of a logical, disconnected view of our world. As children, our fascination with and connection to nature is replaced with a falsified urgency in making more and more tenuous human relationships, and maintaining cultural responsibilities, both of which contain little meaning and serve to widen the gap between the mind and its basest roots. At the very least, we are expected to contain and disguise our curiosity and wonder and replace it with a facade of mild interest, tempered by a healthy, "normal" distance from nature. We are conditioned to believe that the sterile domain of our bank accounts, our jobs, our contrived responsibilities to our culture and one another, are significantly more vital than a present and sensual relationship with the natural world. This is by no means a call to abandon culture, or a demonization thereof. The issue becomes one of balance, rather than exclusivity. As children, we see the perfection in the world. As adults, we often see nothing but its flaws. Our cultural commitment to science offers some measure of equilibrium, but the wonder of discovery has become limited to a narrow group, and rendered unappealing to many that do not belong to the group. Any expression of joy we might feel at such a thing has long since been conditioned out of us, or suppressed and disguised as cursory acknowledgment. 

This is my expression of joy, of wonder, devoted in its concept of scientific discovery and documentation, in the tradition of the great naturalists, and liberated in its sense of imagination, aesthetic and interpretation. 

Writing artist's statements is for ninnies.