Wild cat artist - Here there be leopards

From being the emblem or the coat of arms of the small time princely noblesse in Sicily as depicted in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1956 novel to being a standard attire in the era of leopard print leotards and leopard print cat-suits of the glam MTV 1980s to also being more dubious in its colloquial associations with notorious political firebrands like the infamous LTTE locally and the African-American Black Panther Party in the United States - why Panthera pardus or why the leopard and why now?

Going on Leopard safari:

To go on one of Noel and Cecile’s Unique mobile tented safaris where every detail is seen to whether its Wilpattu located 180km north of Colombo, 26km north of Puttalam or Yala a couple of hours from Galle Fort: Mobile: +94 777314004/ +94713314004. Email:[email protected]

Website: www.leopardsafaris.com.

Experience the national parks in style by travelling in Toyota land cruisers, sleeping in special 100% waterproof and insect-proof African tents, enjoying the luxury of flushable toilets, hot/cold water showers and eating delicious meals beside rivers or under the stars.

“It is this smallest of the big cats” explains Cecile, who works with Sri Lanka’s leopard safari operator Noel Rodrigo.

Cecile is in short in love with leopards and her passion to paint wildlife is clear in a beautiful bold use of colour and setting. Whether it is the club footed stubby yellow one mottled with rosettes, bunched together fighting for space on its fur coat, or the one that is at once a danger that is in danger. It is she feels the ‘fearful symmetry’ to misquote William Blake’s The Tyger off 1794’s Songs of Experience, that she is trying to capture with her paintings and charcoal drawings, while being ensconced in the rapturous insect addled foliage and thick wilderness of the Yala or Wilapatu National Park in Sri Lanka.

The leopard man

With Noel ‘the leopard man’ on wildlife safaris, she has found her life’s calling melding with her childhood passion. Her first glimpse of this majestic beast was when she saw a monstrous male maul and bring death to a crocodile and the second time was when an enraged elephant was chasing away a too curious for its own good female feline which certainly explains the famous proverb ‘curiosity killed the cat’ and talk about Yin and Yang. It is this joy and the appreciation of finding out that each graceful beauty of a leopard has unique characteristics and personality traits that interact with the phenomenon of the natural habitat of the jungle that has lead her to explore this dynamic using her medium and in turn sharing her much praised efforts with fellow lovers of the wild.

Her journey however began in the bustling urban metropolis of modern day Cologne called the ‘world’s greatest heap of rubble’ by its architect and town planner who reconstructed it after the devastation of WWII and apart from the occasional mountain climbing escapade with her dad in the cuckoo clock producing nation Switzerland (at least according to Orson Welles’s Harry Lime in Carol Reed’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s The Third Man) and the even infrequent dream about an African trek, leopards were not even the last thing on her mind.

Soliloquy in solitude

It was however the soliloquy in solitude, the impasse of art, where the mishmash of lines and colours that stood obliquely yet brusquely against the tribulations of having to study courses which she couldn’t really begin to enjoy yet was adept at on the other hand, that led her here. An addiction she adds at which she feels she is better at than others. Without calling it abstract expressionism let us just call it the action of painting on the painting of action.

Starting from kindergarten when she started an acrylic painting course with her mother to ease the stress off her over thinking mind and also as valuable physiotherapy, art has simply been about doing it to the point where art becomes not just a personal expression but an extension of one’s being. And seeing her natural gift her parents and teachers encouraged her in her artistic endeavors, showering her with dizzying praise much deserved. It is not she says the means to an end but the means itself where an elevating mood of I-me-mine is created in which everything and everyone else fades out of the background and into obscurity.

Leopard print

Charcoal bears

The artist shows the character

For her it is the way of accessing the unstoppable unconscious flooded with images, and trusting and challenging her instinct at the same time regarding what is depicted on the canvas, that final emotive evocation or letting go of the being and the soul.

Her love of anything leopard print meant that her teen years and adult years to finally meeting her destiny through a fateful coincidence in Sri Lanka when she arrived here two years ago on an internship at a charity organization and met the leopard man Noel and went on safari, which is no longer a profession, but her chosen career living much of the year organizing leopard safaris and in every spare moment painting her experiences for an exhibition she hopes to hold in Galle later this year.

Cecile in her own words was always bombarded with presents given to her by friends and family where ‘everything was something with leopard’. Her jubilant travel kit was and is still an arsenal of leopard t-shirts, leopard blouses, leopard dresses, leopard slippers, and of course her uber-favourite leopard suitcase. Maybe the satirical Bob Dylan had her in mind when he wrote Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat off the 1966 LP Blonde on Blonde.