Siri's penchant for fine arts supposedly blossomed in her early years at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. Her trainers noticed that she grabbed rocks or sticks to carve etchings in the concrete wall of her exhibit. Painting is one of the enrichment activities this 40-year-old Asian elephant loves the best, says zookeeper Shawn Graham. Whenever the easel appears, Siri gets noticeably excited. Romani, another artistic elephant at Rosamond, performed her first public painting at the Elephant Extravaganza in August.
"They each have unique strokes and you can tell who did the painting," says Graham. Siri holds the paint brush on the side of her trunk while Romani sticks the brush in her nostril. A connoisseur will notice Romani is the more abstract of the two using short, choppy strokes in one section while Siri uses long and slow strokes across the entire canvas.
-Photo provided by Lorrell Walter of Rosamond Gifford Zoo-
No comments:
Post a Comment