a moving still-life

This is a painting of Wang Shimin by Zeng Jing, from 1616.  The famous painter here is thoughtful, posed with fine, mudra-like fingers distractedly holding a fly-whisk.  He is in fact in mourning, his wife has died.  Amazing to me is that his head moves.  Or my eyes move from side to side of his face looking for another ear and so there is my movement around his head.  Zeng Jing suggests this slight movement in a still sitter by painting Wang with one ear.  Gosh!

Courtly Hunts

If you are a member of a Court, Nature does not frighten you much: you are in a rarefied, guarded and pampered place.  Take a look at these playing cards from the early 1400's and you can see, in an amazingly artful way, this notion of Nature playing out a Hunt/Game, sometimes bloodily depicted, while the Court--King and Queen and some attendants--participate gracefully.  The four suits are Falcons, Ducks, Hounds, and Stags, and the "Face" cards are the Court.

You can see more of the wonderful cards at this Metropolitan Museum of Art site.

Zakouma

Elephants at Zakouma (NYTimes photo)

Elephants are doing better in Chad at Zakouma National Park.  And six black rhinos have come to Zakouma this month from South Africa.  These are successes.

www.african-parks.org/the-parks/zakouma 

See also:  The New York Times Sunday Travel: May 20 2018,
"Killing Field to Haven,"  a wonderful account by Rachel Nuwer of her visit to Zakouma.

REST IN PEACE, SUDAN

  
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/science/rhino-sudan-extinct.html




We love you and we will miss you.

Sudan the Rhino

Yesterday, Sudan's health had improved slightly; he seemed to savor a mud bath in the rain, his caretakers said.  Sudan is 45 years old, and since 2009 he and two females--Najin and Fatu--have lived at Ol Pejeta Reserve in Kenya, cared for and protected 24 hours a day.
Sudan is the last surviving Northern White Rhinoceros.
You can view him here:  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43300713
I have made a sketch of him: the sketch channels, a bit, life, I hope.