Anna Benifield - mixed-media artist, certified Master Birder, and Master Birder based in Atlanta, Georgia.

I spent fifteen years as a design lead in corporate America before I walked away to pay closer attention.

The transition wasn't impulsive. I earned my Master Naturalist certification, then spent two years teaching in the field. During this time I fell in love with birds through nature journaling. They were always there, always available, and endlessly complex as subjects. So I went further: four months of study through the Georgia Audubon Society to become a certified Master Birder, to deepen my understanding of the subjects I was building my practice around.

That foundation — fifteen years of design systems, years of field observation, the discipline of scientific study — is what I bring to every piece I make.

I call my process paper taxidermy: a deliberate deconstruction and reconstruction of a subject into my own perspective. Each piece begins with research and field study. I hand-paint the papers, cut every element individually, and layer them onto wood panels — sometimes hundreds of pieces in a single work. The process is meticulous by design, rooted in the same devotion to observation that defined early naturalist illustration. But where John James Audubon documented, I interpret. I'm examining the same subjects through a contemporary lens, rebuilt entirely by hand into something that reflects my own understanding of them. The result is something meant to carry both the weight of that attention and the delight of a bird alive in color and form.

The intention is the work. Not just the result — the entire act of making it.

What ends up on your wall is the product of a naturalist's knowledge, a designer's precision, and a maker's hands. It is not a reproduction of the natural world. It is my interpretation of it.