Taxidermy Profile: The Art of Animal Artistry
Richard: This is such an incredible operation. Please tell me how it all began – I believe you were once a minister.
Mike: Yeah. I grew up in a very fundamentalist home, but also with an art background. My father is 98 and still painting here in Reno. And inadvertently he taught me so many things. I’ll tell you one of my favorites. He first of all worked in an ad agency in Buffalo, New York, and then he got well-enough known, and he was able to come home and work freelance, which was a big deal back then. He had a studio here at the house, and as a kid I was drawn to that studio. One day he called me over. “I want to show you something.” He had a palette there. “These are primary colors, these are complementary colors,” he said. “If you mix this color with this color, look how beautiful that color becomes. Now if you take this color and this colour, it’s mud. Then he added, “That’s what life is. You find the right person to mix your life with, and it will become beautiful.”
Richard: And that is life. A great analogy. Simple: Three primary colors.
Yeah. So anyway, I grew up with
