1. CHRISTOPHER MARLEY
Christopher Marley was born in southern California (1969) and grew up in Oregon. He spent most of his childhood catching snakes, raising lizards, and dreaming of Komodo Dragons.

2. Christopher Marley
He admits to being terrified of anything with more than four legs..

3. Christopher Marley
He began traveling at the age of 19 doing missionary work in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It was then that his phobia became stifling. After his two years in South America, he spent additional time in Southeast Asia and Africa with little improvement.

4. Christopher Marley
One evening in a Bangkok market, he stumbled upon a group of artisans selling small marsupials crammed into cheap frames. Upon closer examination, he realized they were bugs. Even though he was horrified, he was also fascinated. He became enthralled with the size, colors, ridiculous shapes, and perfect mechanics of the creatures.

5. Christopher Marley
Years later, he mustered the courage to dismantle the creatures to make something interesting of them. The experience of handling the specimens and using them as a design medium opened Pandora’s Box for the artist. Years of study in Entomology followed then excursions to remote locals to collect and observe species in their own habitats. He opened his own gallery in 2000.

6. Christopher Marley

7. Christopher Marley
Christopher Marley (American, b. 1969) makes geometric arrangements of exotic insects that were harvested on collecting expeditions and bought from conscientious suppliers. From a dazzling mandala of scarabs to a penetrating portrait of a flower beetle, these images reproduce the same dazzling hues that their subject creatures display in the wild—Marley uses no computer tricks or manipulations.

8. Christopher Marley
Upon his return to study design at BYU, Marley balanced his course of studying design with sabbaticals to work both on and off camera for scores of fashion brands such as DKY, Gucci, and Armani. Over more than a decade, his assignments to dozens of countries as Asia Europe, and Africa and the Americas spawned a passionate drive to share the variety of natural artifacts through his artwork. In addition to his insects his mediums of design include fossils, minerals, botanicals, skeletal structures, and sea life. His work has been seen in numerous magazines and is sold through hundreds of galleries stores and showrooms in the US and abroad.

9. He uses no computer programs to change the dazzling hues of the insects he photographs. They appear in his art work as they appear in nature.