"Motswiri"

'Motswiri' — that is the name I gave this leopard. In Africa, you name the animals you have observed long enough to know. This one I painted perched on his branch, his gaze carried far away, as though he were waiting for something only he could see.

What moves me about the leopard is this way of being at once perfectly still and totally present. His posture is steady, his gaze is distant — and yet you sense that nothing escapes him. I wanted to freeze that suspended instant: that quiet mastery, that feeling that time, for him, turns at a different rhythm from our own.

The framing is tight on the upper body, the branch serving as a horizontal axis that anchors the composition. The light arrives from the side, warm, modelling the coat in golden expanses that sink into muted shadows. I took my time with the textures — every spot, every glint in the coat, the weathered wood of the branch telling its own years. This dialogue between coat and tree gives the scene its depth.

'Motswiri' is an invitation to contemplation — to stop, like him, and look at what we never take the time to see.