"Twiga"

'Twiga' — that is the Swahili word for 'giraffe'. A word that sounds like the animal itself: tall, slender, a little off-balance in its beauty. This painting is part of the 'African Sepias' series, in which I worked with a restrained, almost monochrome palette, to get to the essence of form.

The model was six months old at the time of painting. Six months, and already three metres tall. There is something endearing in the youth of the giraffe — those still-clumsy long legs, that neck not yet fully mastered, that openness of curiosity towards the world. I wanted to fix that precise instant when the awkwardness is still visible, before definitive grace settles in.

For the composition, I chose the close portrait. The young giraffe occupies almost the entire vertical field. No landscape, no context: just it. That tightening forces the eye to settle on the details — the patches, the texture of the coat, and above all the eye, that immense and gentle eye which is perhaps the most beautiful thing about the giraffe.

The light is soft, muted, of that particular quality one finds in the late afternoon over the savannas. The sepia tones amplify this effect — they warm the scene, give it a temporal density, as if this moment already belonged to a precious past. That is what I love about this series: colour fades so that form remains.