A Memory of Elephants: Mark Adlington

This exhibition is called “A Memory of Elephants” after their collective noun but unusually, most of the paintings are of individuals. Age, gender, size, beauty, character, eccentricity, boldness, or the lack of it, defined each elephant I was lucky enough to meet to such an extent that I felt compelled to create a gallery of individuals, some famous or even infamous, but all of whom had made a distinct impression in very different ways.

Without the generosity and encouragement of two exceptional Kenyan families, this exhibition could never have happened. I have witnessed first hand, over several months, the challenges faced by conservation on a  daily basis, which is why I wanted to support Big Life Foundation in its award winning work. The human population of planet earth has doubled since I begged my grandparents to take me to Africa as a small boy, so even without ivory poaching, human/elephant coexistence faces growing and complex difficulties. I have painted a “Memory of Elephants”, a herd, for this exhibition but it is also my personal experience of elephants, of individual, monumental, living, behemoths – the largest land animals on earth. I pray that this poetic collective noun never becomes an epitaph for these magical giants of the Savannah - Mark Adlington