As I said, I have been asked to paint an Orang-utan for The Elephant Family's Jungle City Edinburgh and my design, much like last years Elephant, includes both a sunny, blue-skied side and a threatening, stormy side. Any of you who know anything about my artwork will know that I am obsessed with the postcard and the tourist image, more specifically taking touristic images and removing the usual blue sky and replacing it with something more threatening and unusual to the stereotypical notion of the postcard. These themes influenced my elephant and influence my Orang-utan by making them two sided and using the different skies.
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| Reverse: Stormy Sky, beginnings of greenery and Hornbill |
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| Front: Blue sky, hands and some greenery |
Last years elephant was very easy to make two sided, he had almost identical sides with just a few changes. This year I didn't want to do that exact concept again and the Orang-utan is not by nature an easy animal to make two sides of. He is very much a front important animal and the concept had to recognise that. I also wanted to make a point of him being in Edinburgh.
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| Front: Greenery continued, Edinburgh Castle and Nelsons Monument |
So I decided to have one side include a conglomeration of Edinburgh sights. I was tempted to recreate an iconic Edinburgh scene like you might see on a postcard of that place, however having never gone there I was lacking quite a bit of context that I would normally prefer to have before picking and recreating an image. After looking at Edinburgh tourist websites I settled on three possibilities, Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace and Nelsons Monument.
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| Reverse: Jungle scene including Tiger and Elephant |
I decided to have the other side be a general jungle/densely wooded scene and incorporate all the animals in Jungle City, just as I did for the elephant. I decided that the stormy sky would be best on the jungle scene for two reasons.
While the Jungle frequently has storms and sudden downpours, by having the threatening sky over the animals it does highlight, hopefully that there are other things that threaten them, namely human changes to their habitat, something that is important to the cause.
Scotland, and so it's capital, has the stereotype that it is always raining. It seemed to make sense to put the blue sky here for no other more reason than to break stereotypes. Something I very much like doing.
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| Front: Greenery close to completion. |
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| Reverse: Greenery completed, crocodile can be seen, flowers started. |
Finally I decided to have the jungle scene on his back because he is such a front facing animal. For people seeing him in the streets of Edinburgh the first thing they might think about is that fact there are all these animals in Edinburgh and isn't it grand. The sights of Edinburgh being on his front reinforce this feeling but if you make the effort to look all around him you will find another deeper message. It highlights that the plight of the animals they are seeing around Edinburgh in sculptural form and in their native habitat can easily be forgotten or hidden from view. Hopefully the spectacular lightning strewn sky and slight encroachment by one or two of the animals from the back side onto the front side will encourage people to look all around him.
