Elephant Aesthetics

I was inspired to doodle after watching videos of elephants painting on YouTube. I'm sure they've been trained to some degree to perform for tourists, but the expression Suda makes as she paints gets me every time! She's so focused and delicate with her coordination which seems so amazing and unexpected from such an ungainly, massive creature. When I worked in a frame shop, I had the opportunity to frame some elephant artwork and it was just too cool.
As an art literate audience, we are taught to ask ourselves what the artist might have been thinking or feeling when they were painting. It's amazing to me to think that animals might be feeling or thinking the same thing, or that they might have some abstract, emotional motivation for painting. It just adds another level of significance to the existence of art if it allows for some new level of inter-species communication.