"Elephant Kid 3"

The African elephant calf (Loxodonta africana) walks in step with its mother within hours of birth. Its enormous head represents a third of its body weight; the trunk, still poorly controlled, often trails on the ground for the first few weeks. The skin, already wrinkled and parchment-like, will protect the animal for fifty years or more.

The posture chosen is that of an elephant that has sat down by accident and cannot quite work out how to get up again — all four legs splayed out in front of it, body slightly slumped, trunk dangling between the knees. It is this comic vulnerability, this clumsiness particular to the very young, that the watercolour seeks to fix: the contrast between the species' future power and the momentary fragility of the calf.