Gorilla Gorilla - Mountain Gorilla Painting

The Mountain Gorilla is one of my favored animals within the Animal Kingdom, and one of the most desperate. These animal portraits are painted to convey the power, awe, beauty, vulnerability and sheer magnificance of the animal kingdom. The concept behind the collection is to portray the importance of each animal, how their influence should be acknowledged and their larger than life presence respected. The structure and composition of each unique piece uses the effect of direct eye contact and gives aid to deliver their tenuously threatened and endangered existence on the fragile planet they share with humans. The animal portraits are originally creating using digital means, (these are not paintings of actual photographs), the images are built using Photoshop. Manipulation of the image is purposefully intended to enhance the symmetry of the face, allowing the eyes to always face forward, (an intricate purpose behind the concept of each head, to emphasize how the portrait will communicate, (via eye-contact), with the viewer). On viewing the portraits , face-to-face, the intention is to have the viewer look up to the species, as the eye level of each animal, (during presentations and hangings), is slightly above the normal human eye level height, allowing the viewer to look up to each portrait, emphasizing their “larger-than-life”, almost god-like presence before the viewer.