The Elephant not in the room - say hello to Rosie



Can't believe its been 6 weeks since I posted anything here.

On May 14th I took delivery of a beautiful 70 kg life-sized baby elephant sculpture to paint for Elephant Parade and my life has not been my own since then. My design had some very intricate elements so all in all a fun but very time consuming activity.

A major difficulty was that Rosie's rotund rear would not go through the door into my newly acquired  painting studio up at Wainsgate Chapel in Old Town so I've had to paint her in a rather dark corridor. My life as an artist is always filled with 'interesting' challenges!

Elephant Parade is a social enterprise based in Holland that organises the world's largest art exhibition of decorated elephant statues to raise awareness of the plight of the Asian elephant and to support elephant conservation. You can read all about it at www.elephantparade.com

In February 2013 I was approached to submit a design for an elephant on the UK tour and formally commissioned in March.  As well as decorating the full sized 150 cm tall elephant, I was required to paint a 20 cm model that will be used to make the replicas sold to raise funds for the real elephants.

I've had to resist blogging about the project for a while as Elephant Parade requested the full design should be kept under wraps until the start of the Parade on 21st July, but now I can start showing what I've been up to all these weeks.