A Neverending Story Celebrating The Wonder of Animals and Nature Through Puzzle Art

I'm finally getting started on something I've had in the planning stages for awhile now, and I'm soooooo excited about it!!  I've always loved puzzles, and used to spend hours and hours toiling away as a child to pass the long winter days in Alaska.  I would disappear into my own little world and wouldn't even notice what was happening around me as I intently focused on finding that elusive piece.  There is just something so satisfying about putting the pieces together to create a final image.  I always liked the larger puzzles, 1,000 pieces or more, there was more of a challenge and the reward was that much sweeter when the final piece was put into place.

As an adult I still work on puzzles, oftentimes with my daughter, making it a family affair now.  And during the pandemic quarantine it was the perfect time to really delve into the fun that is puzzling.  It also got my wheels turning on wanting to create my own puzzles, initially it was just thoughts of taking existing art and using them for traditional puzzles (which I now have, click on pic below), but then I came upon these wooden shaped puzzle pieces and the lightbulb went off!  

Mikee checking out my traditional puzzle, available in my Pixels.com shop

I knew I just had to do something epic with these puzzle pieces and the more I thought about it, the better my idea formulated.  And I FINALLY started working on it yesterday!  And it's turning out so good, I can barely contain my excitement!!  It's going to be quite the challenge I can tell already.  It is a puzzle in the truest sense of the word in a couple of ways, one, it's obviously made with puzzle pieces that fit together, and two it's a mental puzzle challenge for me to create a design that flows seamlessly from one piece to the other.  To be cohesive and yet keep each piece individual and standalone.  

This puzzle is A Neverending Story...I am going to continue to add new puzzle pieces for an undetermined amount of time, but hopefully for a very long time!  Each piece of this puzzle will feature an animal, some of them endangered, some recovered from the endangered list through conservation efforts and others just because, haha! 

My goal for this work of puzzle art is to create a beautiful, colorful celebration of animals and the natural world.  We are all interconnected, and share this amazing planet that we get to call home.  By creating this puzzle and sharing it with art collectors and animal lovers around the world, I hope to create a sense of togetherness, we ARE in this together, and we need to be aware of our impact on the environment and other species, and be sure to make it positive.  Let's join together and help preserve and nurture this beautiful world that we all share, and celebrate the wonder of all the beautiful creatures that work in symbiotic harmony to create the most beautiful puzzle...planet earth.

A portion of the proceeds from each original puzzle piece will be donated to ReWild, an organization I have collaborated with, and contribute to, to help “conserve the diversity of life on Earth".