Artist's Statement:
As a youth, Leonardo loved flight. When he saw schoolmates tear wings from a butterfly, his face became distorted and he walked away. He would later design, but never build, flying machines.

"Codice sul Volo Degli Uccelli" synthesizes, with a measure of caprice, some variations on da Vinci themes. Hints of architecture, Mona Lisa's horizon in dream-like sfumato, designs for impossible machines, and the potential for flight, ebb and flow in the piece.

In Leonardo's journal, when he addressed the mathematics of flight, his frustration emerged when he crossed out the page cramped with ranks of small figures and exclaimed in the margin, "The devil take it!" And so his oath echoed through to Kill Devil Hill.