Introduction to From the Eye of the Elephant
Paintings by Elephants
Dedicated to Richard Lair
Galen, come on down to Lampang,” Richard said over the phone, “and we’ll select a few of my elephant paintings. I want you to have them; take them back to your studio.”
This conversation took place in 2017. Although retired, Richard was working diligently on creating technology to identify elephants by photographing their eyes, in the same way humans can be identified by their fingerprints. He called it Elephant Eye-D, and its purpose was to keep track of and monitor the elephant population in Thailand.
When I interviewed him for my elephant film, Panom, in 1999, I learned that he had devised a project in which sanctuary elephants created paintings on paper. He understood that those elephants that had been used as working elephants and remained in captivity could not be reintroduced to the wild. Although elephants are not typically considered domesticated animals, such as cattle, horses, or humans, they form a strong bond with humans that prevents them from being reintroduced to their native habitat.
In the early days of filming Panom, I was invited to participate in the painting project. My job was to decide on the color palette, mix the paint, load the brush, and hand it to the mahout, who then gave it to the elephant. It was most definitely a collaborative process. Still, how the pigment is applied to paper is entirely the elephant’s choice, and looking at these paintings, while we can’t know what the elephants were thinking, the similarity in the subject matter is remarkable. Are we seeing the elephants’ interpretation of clusters of humans moving about them? Perhaps. Despite the reciprocity involved—elephants create paintings; humans give them food—they seem to enjoy the activity, perhaps in the same way young children so easily express their world in color and shape, or adult artists who successfully reclaim their ‘child-self,’ artists like Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, or Cy Twombly.
I brought them back, photographed, cataloged, wrapped, and stored them in my studio art drawers.
In late 2024, Richard, after suffering numerous health dilemmas and being mostly bedridden, chose, at the age of 81, to end his life simply by not eating, a sweet act of irony in that when old elephants lose their last set of teeth, they quit eating and die. On July 15th, 2024, a friend and I drove to Lampang to visit Richard on the twenty-second day of his transition. While his physical body was diminished to only skin and skeleton, his mind was clear, and his wit and humor were as sharp as ever. He died two days later.
Soon after, Northern Thailand experienced massive flooding. My home and studio in Mae Rim suffered considerably. The fierce currents completely swept away my downstairs open-air studio, works in progress, art materials, tools, and, sadly, the paintings Richard had given me.
The river takes and leaves what it will.
This book includes images of the lost paintings, two poems I wrote after completing the elephant film in 2007, as well as a 2011 satirical short story about the first elephants who arrive from the Creator’s clever ingenuity, floating in the sky, singing as a choral octet when they aren’t eating.
From the Eye of the Elephant is dedicated to Richard for his many years of helping us understand our relationship to elephants, who share a remarkably similar familial blueprint to humans.
Twenty-five years ago, I began my journey to create the Elephant film after experiencing an inner epiphany while reading a Smithsonian article about the plight of the Asian elephant. Within a few months, I’d sold my home and studio in Washington State, bought myself a Canon XL1 video camera, and set off for Northern Thailand. I don’t know if that inner voice was the voice of an elephant, but I choose to believe it was. And now, from what feels like a second epiphany, perhaps from the same voice, this book celebrates these twenty-five years with a symbolic gift exchange from elephant to human.
From the Eye of the Elephant will help support Cultural Crossroads Asia, a non-profit entity founded by Victoria Vorreiter to help preserve and nourish indigenous cultures and the book also celebrates the inaugral Mae Rim Festival of Music and Art.
Let it be so, then, these gifts from one species to another, doing what art and music are meant to do: enriching culture, history, and storytelling in the grand tapestry of life, reminding us that we’re all one family on this incredible planet we call home.
Galen Garwood