The World Inspired Landscape Series has travelled in geographical space and explored the boundaries of what it means to be a landscape painting, however, it has not yet travelled in time per say. In this painting you probably wouldn't recognize the island nation at first glance, but you could recognize the birds running around the beachfront. These are artistic renderings of the Dodo bird which went extinct hundreds of years ago due to humans, invasive species and habitat loss on the islands of Mauritius. Mauritius is located in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar and near the French island of Reunion. In fact, our plane landed briefly in Mauritius on the way back from the Seychelles on route to Reunion, but I was stuck in the airport the whole time before getting a connecting flight. In history, Mauritius was not inhabited until Arab traders, followed by Portuguese, Dutch, French and British powers tried to rule the island group. The people are thus a mix of cultures most closely matched to India.
To do the painting, I found some drawings by Joris Laerle from a ship called the Gelderland according to Wikipedia. Thus, the painting is done from drawings that another artist might have made 550 years ago which is kind of neat. I embellished the colours of the Dodos and why not, how can anyone be sure what colour they were exactly? Some of the historical accounts of the Dodo talked how they may have tasted, to which you would guess chicken. On the contrary they tasted quite unpleasant and were hard to cook. The main trees in the background are Ebony trees, which were once abundant on the island and quite valuable which lead to their demise. I liked the fact that the roots of the trees echoed the gnarled talons of the bird claws.
World Inspired Landscapes: Mauritius, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, March 2024
No comments:
Post a Comment