Let's talk about the elephant in the room, or how about that giraffe? Cameroon is one of the largest and wealthiest countries in Africa, it has a varied landscape and lots of natural resources. It was formed by the colonial powers after many successive changes. Portugal, Germany, France and England all had an influence on forming what is now Cameroon. France in particular remained the ruling power until Cameroon's relative independence in the mid 20th century. The country remains divided along cultural lines, with English in the north and French in the south. One neat thing about Cameroon is that they have a lot of animals that live in protected areas. In the painting, you can obviously see the elephant hiding in the bushes. Just kidding. The jagged mountains in the background are called volcanic plugs, they are very prominent in the country, they form when the lava from a volcano cools off and then the surrounding portion erodes, just leaving the solidified magma.
From reading a book and looking through the internet including wikipedia, google maps, and images, I noticed that Cameroon has a lot of iron-oxide earth colours like burnt sienna and umbers. The greenery was olive tones, with turquoise mountains in the distance. It all seemed interesting but I have painted many scenes of trees and mountains. To make the painting stand out, no pun intended, the actual landscape is seen through the legs of a giraffe. My initial idea was to show the rear-end of the giraffe, which was a composition that Hiroshige once used with a horse. The side view I chose was majestic and played well against the rugged landscape of Cameroon.
World Inspired Landscapes: Cameroon, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, December 2021 (No. 2959)
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