"Elephant Crossing"

The Zambezi is one of those rivers that structures southern Africa as much as it traverses it. Elephants cross it regularly, often in groups, in a relative silence that contrasts with the power of what one observes. Three of them, here. Water at mid-body, tusks catching the light, trunks raised.

What stopped me in this scene is the way the bodies organise themselves naturally in space — almost like a considered composition, even though it is not at all. Three immense masses advancing in the same direction, and yet each with its own presence, its own relationship to the light.

The composition is resolutely horizontal, but the trunks and tusks introduce diagonals, breaks, an almost abstract graphic dynamism. I worked a great deal on texture — the thick, rough skin of the elephants, the water catching the light differently on different surfaces, the contrast between deep shadow areas and the almost white reflections on the tusks.

This painting is as much an exercise in light as a portrait of animals. At a certain level of detail, the skin of a wet elephant becomes almost an abstraction — a geography of textures and tones. That is what I wanted to explore here, and what I hope the viewer feels when they draw closer.