This elephant, which follows the compositional continuity of the painting ‘Delete the Hunters,’ is a commission from Mrs. Suwanna Gauntlett, director of Wild Life Alliance, a highly active wildlife and flora preservation organization, primarily in Cambodia, where Mrs. Gauntlett is a well-known and respected activist.

As always, the elephant here serves as a pretext to tell a story resembling those who commissioned the painting. The artist has depicted on either side of the animal’s trunk two stylized trees climbing and opening at their tops into a plume representing the elephant’s ears.

The two trees symbolize the lives of Suwanna and her brother Stéphane (also an environmental activist), each climbing in their own direction and at their own pace. These floral elements symbolize both the fight for nature and life paths.

The golden streaks extending from the trunk in two directions are also life paths, scattered with difficulties (represented by golden spheres), but these difficulties or choices can also become seeds that sprout and grow into beautiful trees and lives, illustrated here by Suwanna and Stéphane’s trees.

The elephant’s forehead, filled with colors and geometric shapes, is an allegory of life, with its twists and flamboyances, curves, and straight lines. It is noteworthy that each of the two trees has a stem that penetrates the animal’s forehead, carving a path and ultimately connecting to an eternal heart located at the base of the pachyderm’s trunk. This heart serves as a reminder of the enduring love between brother and sister despite the distances and hardships of existence.

In conclusion, the idea was to celebrate brotherly love and by extension, the love for the earth and its forms of life.

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