When I think about a common movement made every day, I think about writing, manipulating a pen, pencil; even painting is very gestural. What fascinates me about this concept is that when you take it apart piece by piece, you come to realize that working with your mark making implement, you are transferring an abstract concept between the mark maker and the viewer. I believe this is extremely true in the case of small children or people just learning to paint, because they tend to make a mark which describes what they "think" rather than what they "see".

Much later as these skills develop the words/images become clarity with practice and maturity. Therefor you can imagine my surprise when I came across Paya, a 6 year old elephant in a Northern Thailand elephant village who paints. Pachiderms are believed to be on par with primates regarding intelligence. Her painting, however, crosses so many bridges and tells us there is so much waiting for us to see in the animal kingdom that our humanity has overlooked in the past.

This story becomes yet another fascet of my idea of human and animal blending...only here the elephant is creating images which her human audience can cleary understand and enjoy