Wild about Elephants

The more I paint elephants, the more I love them. Here are Thai and Simunye, just finished. Measuring 48×48, each portrait is close to actual size. Thai is a 50-year-old Asian male and Simunye a 20-year-old African female. They are so different: their skin, ears, foreheads, their texture and coloring. They may be the most […]

Hot off the “Press”

                  Here are the newly finished paintings of Wyatt and Ajax, the Amur Leopard couple I met at the Santa Barbara Zoo last year. Ajax (the female on the right) had just arrived from a zoo in the U.K. because the AZA had determined that a mating […]

Revisiting

Last month, for the first time ever, I revisited animals I’d met in 2014, some of whom I’d already painted. “Things change” is one lesson learned. These animals live in communities. Things are dynamic. Life happens for them too. Michael was my favorite gorilla in 2014. Belonging to the bachelor troop of three at the Houston Zoo, […]

meeting my subjects…

Last week I finished painting a Malayan tiger I’d met in Houston in May 2015. While painting, I didn’t know the tiger’s name or age or gender. I only knew that two of the more than twenty times I came to visit, the tiger would be awake, sitting up in the grass, surveying their world […]