For the love of elephants: Watercolors that help them roam free

April 22, 2016April 25, 2016 | maggiebird

Asian elephant — Stone thrower (African Elephant)
Visit my Etsy shop to learn the story of this elephant

From now until World Elephant Day in August in I’m offering a limited run of prints of two of my watercolors of elephants. These elephants live at the facility of the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS). You can buy the prints at MargaretSloan.etsy.com. A portion of the proceeds for each sale will go to PAWS to help support the elephants.

I’ve always had a thing for elephants, ever since watching the documentary The African Elephant when I was a kid. The more I learn about them, the more I think they are a sentient species (as far as I can understand sentience). They have complicated family relationships, they mourn death and celebrate life, and they display a sharp intelligence. And don’t forget their proverbial memory.

It was the highlight of 2015 that I was able to get close enough to really observe these magnificent animals. Last fall I was privileged to visit Ark 2000, an animal sanctuary of the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), an organization that rescues animals used in the entertainment industry—think circuses, animal shows, and, yes, zoos—and provides a place for them to retire. They have large roaming areas, ponds, heated barns, good food. And they don’t have to work any more. They just get to be the animals they are.

I’ve blogged about that trip before. Here are some of the highlights.

Some of the elephants at PAWS had been mistreated in their former working lives, or were stolen from their mothers as little babies. Some witnessed elephants killing elephants; possibly some witnessed humans killing their mothers. It’s a wonder that the animals at PAWS have been able to overcome their past traumas to form attachments with the humans that care for them. There are a trio of Africans who throw stones at cars, but other elephants we met were just as curious about us as we were about them.

We got to meet Nicholas personally. He rumbled low as his keeper showed us how they had convinced Nicholas to open his mouth for dental inspection, or show them the bottom of his ottoman-sized feet. I don’t like to use the word trained. Really what they’ve done is learned how to communicate with the animals, and they’ve done it in a way that doesn’t involve pain or punishment. If these animals consent to a dental examination, or present their ottoman-sized feet for a checkup, it’s because they want to. Not because someone is stabbing them with a bullhook.

(click here to read the whole post).

That brilliant day I couldn’t stop sketching. I could have drawn Nicholas all day long as he snuffled through a pile of bran meal on the floor and purred his elephant growl.

Drawing portraits in person always brings me closer to my subject, and drawing Nicholas was no different. I could feel an intelligence there, a being that knew exactly who he was and who accepted that a small female humana was observing him while he observed her.

PAWS also does education outreach about “energy conservation, conservation of wildlife habitat, and recognition of animals as individuals with a right to peace and dignity.”

You can own one (or two) of these beautiful prints and help support the elephants at PAWS.

Read more about PAWS at their website, www.pawsweb.org.

Elephants at PAWS

November 24, 2015February 11, 2016 | maggiebird

Thika on the hill at PAWS
Watercolor and gouache on Arches #300 hot press

I was recently selected to be an exhibiting artist in the project AnimalScapes of the Sierra Nevada Foothills. This show, a tri-county project of the Calaveras County Arts Council, Tuolumne County Arts Alliance and the Amador County Arts Council, will include over 50 artists and makers. We artists will be creating pieces—paintings, pottery, photos, sculptures, even poetry—that depict animals in the Sierra Foothills, and our works will travel around the three counties in an exhibition to be displayed in 2016.

Thika the elephant stood on the hill looking down at us. PAWS president Ed Stewart said, “if I called her, she’d probably come down. But it’s such a beautiful scene, let’s leave her there.” Indeed. Thika was posing like a movie star between two old oak trees, and the cameras of the AnimalScapes artists clicked and whirred. I took lots of photos, and I sketched fiercely.

PAWS, the Performing Animal Welfare Society, is home to 8 elephants. The property in Calaveras County, fittingly called Ark 2000, has enough land that the huge animals can roam on mountainsides, splash in pools, and live out their lives as close to wildness as they could possibly come in the Central Sierra Foothills.

I have to admit that I’ve always had a thing for elephants, ever since watching the documentary The African Elephant when I was a kid. It seems to me that they are as conscious as we pretend to be; their complicated familial relationships, their obvious understanding of death and life, and their clear but ponderous intelligence makes me believe they are a sentient species. And we are destroying them.

Some of the elephants at PAWS had been mistreated in their former working lives, or were stolen from their mothers as little babies. Some witnessed elephants killing elephants; possibly some witnessed humans killing their mothers. It’s a wonder that the animals at PAWS have been able to overcome their past traumas to form attachments with the humans that care for them. There are a trio of Africans who throw stones at cars, but other elephants we met were just as curious about us as we were about them.

We got to meet Nicholas personally. He rumbled low as his keeper showed us how they had convinced Nicholas to open his mouth for dental inspection, or show them the bottom of his ottoman-sized feet. I don’t like to use the word trained. Really what they’ve done is learned how to communicate with the animals, and they’ve done it in a way that doesn’t involve pain or punishment. If these animals consent to a dental examination, or present their ottoman-sized feet for a checkup, it’s because they want to. Not because someone is stabbing them with a bullhook.

I couldn’t stop sketching. I could have drawn Nicholas all day long as he snuffled through a pile of bran meal on the floor and purred his elephant growl.

Drawing portraits in person always brings me closer to my subject, and drawing Nicholas was no different. I could feel an intelligence there, a being that knew who he was and who accepted that a small female animal was observing him while he observed her.

Graphite sketch of Thika the elephant at PAWS

AnimalScapes blog posts

Drawing animals for AnimalScapes

Sketching bears and tigers at the PAWS Ark 2000 animal sanctuary

Elephants at PAWS

Sketching bears and tigers at the PAWS Ark 2000 animal sanctuary

October 28, 2015November 24, 2015 | maggiebird

Animals at PAWS Watercolor in Stilman & Birn Zeta Series — Animals at PAWS
Watercolor in Stilman & Birn Zeta Series

A part of AnimalScapes, we chosen artists were gifted with a trip to PAWS, an organization whose mission is “….the protection of performing animals, to providing sanctuary to abused, abandoned and retired captive wildlife, to enforcing the best standards of care for all captive wildlife, to the preservation of wild species and their habitat and to promoting public education about captive wildlife issues.”

Touring the PAWS sanctuary in Calaveras County is a coveted trip. They don’t open to the public often, and when they do, it’s usually for expensive fundraisers that many artists could never afford. I was indeed lucky.

Bears — Bear sketches at PAWS
Watercolor in Stilman & Birn Zeta Series Sketchbook

There’s a reason the sanctuary is off-limits to most people. The president of the organization, Ed Stewart, showed us around the sanctuary, and introduced us to many of the animals, and told us the stories of their lives before they were rescued. “Most of these animals have been places where they can’t get away from people,” Stewart said. Frankly, these animals have suffered so much at the hands of humans that they should never have to see us again.

Stewart told stories that make your blood run cold: a bear cub sold at a flea market as a birthday gift for a 4-year-old, then chained, starving, in the back yard for years. Grizzlies and black bears bred to create hybrids, then kept in small cages at roadside attractions. On and on and on. And not in some crazy ignorant poverty-stricken country either; but right here in the United States. I don’t understand. Why on earth do people do things like this?

Tigers and elephants at PAWS Watercolor in Stilman & Birn Zeta Series — Tigers and elephants at PAWS
Watercolor in Stilman & Birn Zeta Series

But as horribly as these animals have been treated by humans, they appear to have learned to accept the folks at PAWS, or at least have unlearned some of their fear and hatred. When we crept up to the bear enclosures, the bears, expecting food, came down to see what was up. We were admonished to be very quiet; no worries there. I was so stunned and in awe of being so near a bear that I could hardly talk at all.

There were two tigers that we could see in an enclosure (The sanctuary rescued 39 big cats in 2003. Meet them here.) One slept with its back to us the whole time we were there. Another padded out, looked at us in what seemed to be disgust, and disappeared from view. Stewart said that this was much better than when the tigers first came to the sanctuary. Rescued from an abusive tiger breeder, they hated humans when they first arrived. The two tigers we saw didn’t seem to be happy about us gawping at them, but at least they weren’t scaling the fence to get at us.

I know that the sanctuary isn’t the same as a jungle or veld or forest where animals can roam at will. But there are fewer and fewer of those places left on our small planet as the human population grows exponentially. And the Sanctuary is a place where at least a small number of being hurt by humans can live out their lives in peace and safety.

Next: Elephants at PAWS

Here’s a vid of the tigers at PAWS