"Desert Mother" is a life size study of a coyote mother with two pups. It is a piece designed to capture both the spirit of youth at play, as well as the maternal nature of wildlife. The piece is bronze, cast through the ancient lost was casting process. James Paulsen is a self-taught artist. Alternately studying the wilds of the Northern forest, and the open beauty of the American Southwest, he concentrates his work on natural subjects he has grown up with, and is heavily influenced by his family's artistic background, being raised by an artist-illustrator and an author. In his work he explores merging the beauty he sees in the natural world with the expressiveness of clay and bronze.