36” x 28.5”

Mixed Media painting. Framed without glass.

The second image in a series of three, shows an elephant with a tree ring pattern imposed into its silhouette. Like the rhino, the eye of this elephant is composed of a clock that has its hands at a second before midnight, evoking a commentary on human significance. A pendulum with a target swings back and forth, placing a constant mark on the animal, compromising its survival in the wild. The tusk is burning down, resulting in a pile of ashes, which references the confiscated blood ivory stockpiles that are being crushed and cremated in various countries. The blood ivory crisis is a prevalent conservation crime of the Anthropocene, it is a soulless trade that makes a currency of death, by commoditizing life. It condones irreverent consumerism. There is no compassion, compunction or common sense dictating the next take, and that makes the take result in the potential extinction of this highly sentient, social species.

This work describes not only a loss of individuals from the overall elephant count in the annual census but also the disintegration of elephant families and by extension the unraveling of deeply engaged elephant societies. We are losing an elephant every 15 minutes at the hands of a poacher, which means elephants are losing family members that are vital to their growth and assimilation of trans-generational knowledge. Without such cultural context, an elephant is no longer able to psychologically and emotionally be an elephant in the world today. Much like human beings, elephants are highly gregarious beings that mourn for their dead and connect to their living relatives routinely, when deprived of these natural interactions, elephants become disengaged, damaged and dysfunctional.