If I could choose what I leave behind, what would I want it to be?

LET MY LEGACY BEGIN...

​After a lifetime of creating art in many different styles and mediums, I found myself thinking about the work I would most want to leave behind. Not what might sell the best. Not what someone else might be looking for. Not what I should be creating.

What do I love enough to keep creating simply because it makes my heart happy?

The answer was already there.

I kept coming back to the photographs I've made of the natural world—the birds, the animals, the wildlife and domestic creatures I've encountered throughout my life. These are the subjects I've always been drawn to. They have been a constant part of my life, and I've learned so much simply by observing them.

There are so many life lessons to be found in watching the creatures around us—their resilience, their curiosity, their patience, their determination, their ability to adapt, and their remarkable ability to simply live in the moment. In many ways, they have taught me far more than they will ever know.

I've also always been drawn to peaceful places in nature and to wide-open spaces—the kind of places where you can stand quietly, look toward the horizon, and feel that the world is limitless. Those places have a way of reminding me that there is always somewhere else to go, something else to discover, and possibility waiting just beyond what we can see.

These are the things I want to bring together in Legacy.

I take the creatures I've photographed in the real world and give them a new home, a new story, or perhaps even a more beautiful place to exist. I place them into timeless landscapes inspired by the Old Masters, creating scenes where wildlife and nature come together in a way that feels both familiar and imagined.

I love the idea that these creatures—some photographed in places that were ordinary, crowded, or anything but beautiful—can be given a peaceful place to belong. A place that feels as though it could have existed a hundred years ago, and might still be beautiful a hundred years from now.

This is the art I want to make.
​
Not because it is what someone else is asking for.
Not because it follows a trend.
But because it is the art that makes my heart happy.
And perhaps, in the end, that is what a legacy really is.
​
--Jai Johnson--