Title: Madagascar

I walked through Madagascar at night with a headlamp, searching for aye-ayes and fossas. I never found them. What I found instead, when I looked down, was that the soil was sparkling. When I zoomed in with my camera I realized the light was reflecting off spider eyes; hundreds of them, all around my feet. I went back to my tent and changed into proper shoes. This painting holds everything I love and grieve about Madagascar; the fossa in the shadows, the lemur in the tree, the snake, the bromeliad glowing pink in the dark. The silver mica in the soil are the spider eyes. Madagascar's animals are disappearing. Some are being killed because of superstition, because they are considered ugly or bad luck. The idea that we are losing them fills me with a particular kind of despair.