There is no doubt that Shaun Leane is a romantic at heart, in the broadest sense of the word, entranced from a young age by storytelling, history, adventure, Greek mythology and the ancient Egyptians. And it is the romance of the natural world, he explains, that provides him with never-ending “perfect subject matter”. A lifelong collector of natural objects (fossils, shells, minerals…) he is enthralled by the whole drama of nature, its unstoppable force and compelling contradictions of tenderness and brutality, strength and fragility, allure and menace, light and dark. Most of all, he has come to appreciate the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth.