In 1988 I went to New York City for the first time. While there I happened upon The Cloisters, an affiliate of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This place is home to the famous fifteenth century tapestries called "The Hunt for the Unicorn". Being young and naive, I did not know that these tapestries existed, until I walked into one of the rooms at the museum and there they were. My response was immediate: tears welled up in my eyes and I thought my heart would burst out of my chest with love.

Since there are seven of the wall-sized tapestries, I walked back and forth, from room to room to see them all. The experience changed my life. At the time I had no idea why, but upon leaving the museum I bought a book on the famed pieces, just knowing that they would some day inspire my own art.

In 2000 I rediscovered the work of world- renowned photographer and naturalist, Robert Vavra. Years before, I had come across his books Equus and Such is the Real Nature of Horses in the university library as an art student. At the time the beauty of his images had overwhelmed me and I did not forget them. So, in 2000 I went looking for his books again, feeling they might be inspirational for a series of paintings I was thinking of doing on horses.

Imagine my surprise when, after typing his name in the public library computer, the first two books listed were about unicorns! I was so intrigued I immediately checked them out of the library and the series on horses was forgotten. Once again, upon seeing the images my heart over flowed with love and I cried. It wasn't long before I had contacted Mr. Vavra and got his generous permission to use the photographs as subjects for a series of paintings that would eventually be called "The Return of the Unicorn".

The tapestries I had seen in New York so many years before suddenly became important, and I poured over the book I had bought. Eventually, after a number of experimental paintings were tried, I settled on doing a tribute to the great tapestries by painting my own wall-sized unicorns in oils. Although I originally intended to do twenty, life had other ideas and in the end there are seven - the same number as the tapestries at the Cloisters.

I have since seen the other famous wall-sized unicorn tapestries from the fifteenth century, "The Lady and the Unicorn" at the Cluny Museum in Paris. Funnily enough, for six years I lived in a tiny hamlet in rural Alberta named Cluny, long before I ever knew that the museum and its tapestries existed.

This chapter with the unicorns has come to a close, but their energy remains in my heart. I, not the unicorns, have returned. They, in fact, never left, having lived on in the hearts of the pure and innocent. I wait to see what they have in store for me next.