Description
“The road was straight, long and uneventful and with the morning energy waning from our group, each person fell to their own private thoughts.
I wondered if the stars would be as magnificent over the Kalahari, whether I might glimpse a brown hyena, and that I couldn’t wait to peel my socks off and have them laundered.
It was appropriate then that when we least expected it, when our exuberance for this magical place was somewhat dulled by exhaustion, that it should remind us that wonder stalks around the corner.
Lelobu, our new vehicle, slowed with a lurch and B-man whispered, “Leopard”.
And there he was, trotting on the roadside ahead, not 40 feet away. My heart clenched in disbelief as he swerved and dove into the swaddle of ochre painted brush. Our vehicle pulled up beside him and I became acutely aware of the awkward prattling din of our vehicle’s engine.
A fierce effulgent gaze that rivaled the brilliance of the sun commanded us to the fall of awe.
And then he was gone.” --Excerpt from “Dry Season Only”
This is a piece I completed sometime last year for our Expanding Horizons Kickstarter and the book that would later be called "Dry Season Only" (for REASONS).
This painting is a coalescence of many moments from our trip to Botswana. It all sped by so fast, a tangle of moments with indeterminable beginnings and ends. It was all hard to process in the moment, so it makes sense, I suppose, that through art these memories found their place and the poignancy of emotion that I did not have a chance to experience in the moment itself.
This piece is dedicated to my husband, Lorien, and to Hawa, The Leopard Sun.
There are so many more words I could use in this description to talk about this piece, what it means to me and how it came to be but I feel I’d just be regurgitating passages of the book.
If you are interested, there are still some limited number of books available through the artists that I was blessed enough to share this journey with. This is an extremely limited run and unlikely that it will be published again due to prohibitive costs. But if you would like to have one of your own and share in our story and support it’s creators, you may purchase a copy from myself or one of the other incredible artists that went.
You can buy one of my copies from: spiramirabilis.storenvy.com/co…
Or Laura Garabedian’s shop at:
www.etsy.com/shop/LauraGarabed…
Or Foxfeather’s shop at:
www.etsy.com/listing/294961275…
As always, thank you for looking folks, your support is what made this book, this piece, and just about all the work I do possible. Thank you for being a source of encouragement and inspiration!