World Inspired Landscapes: Comoros

 

Comoros is a small group of islands in the Indian Ocean, located off the coast of Madagascar. They are volcanic islands with pristine beaches and rolling, forested mountains. For the most part, Comoros is inhabited by people who migrated from Africa and Madagascar since antiquity, although it was at one time a part of the French colonial rule. One of their islands is still under dispute with France. What impressed me the most about Comoros was its remoteness, and the beauty of the sunsets as seen on Google earth. I also had a travel book on the island nations of the Indian ocean, but only a few pages were dedicated to Comoros. After painting scenes from a bird's-eye perspective such as Chile, I thought it would be neat to compose this painting from the ground up, literally. From a crab's-eye perspective!

As the viewer, you are crawling around amongst the land crabs that are common to the African coast and surrounding islands. Called a brown crab, or a coconut crab, these land crabs have adapted to life out of water. They seem to be vegetarians. I found a research article that talked about where the young land crabs live, because they are seldom seen. It turns out that the crabs dig deep nests that go below the water line, and the bottom of the nest fills up with watery sand. The scientists found the baby crabs living in the bottom of the nest submerged in the water. This is because crabs are actually underwater creatures, and land crabs have been slowly evolving to breath air. The adults can breath air, but the babies have to grow up in the watery environment first. The painting shows some of the adult land crabs, enjoying the Comoros sunset. They have eight legs and two claws for a total of ten, and their colours vary from sandy beige to deep earth-reds and browns.

World Inspired Landscapes: Comoros, watercolour 4.5 x 12" cold press, January 2022 (No. 2969a)