Montreal-based artist and photographer Raku Inoue loves to showcase his colorful portraits of insects and other animals. He is not an insect collector, nor he does not collect stuffed animals or paintings of them. But he makes portraits of these creatures as well as flowers, leaves, twigs, seeds, and stems. Most of his compositions are insects, and they are amazingly lifelike. “Insects have always been symbolic for me,” says Inoue, who grew up in Japan. Each summer his grandmother would leave the door open to cool their house in the countryside near Hiroshima to welcome in dragonflies, an insect that she believed represented the presence of her late husband. These days, Inoue makes dragonflies, beetles, ants, scorpions and whatever else inspires him, using materials from his own backyard, leftover flower petals from nearby florists and occasionally, plants that people all over the world send to him to challenge his creativity.