Bob Smith travels the world in search of works of art he can find to bring back to his business, Wanderer Imports at Gallery 4 in Tiverton, for exhibit and for sale.
He was in north-central Thailand about five years ago when he discovered, quite by accident, a relatively rare form of art that has caught on so strongly, it is now one of the most popular offerings at his gallery.
“I was just over there on a business trip and looking for a little respite, a day to just kind of relax and hang out,” he said. “I thought I would visit this [conservation] camp for a few hours and I ended up spending the whole day. When I saw these guys painting, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is unbelievable’.”
The “guys” he refers to are Asian elephants at the Elephant Conservation Center, a place he said is far less like a circus than other conservation areas he’s visited. The center cares for abused and abandoned animals as well as elephants and has a hospital devoted entirely to the pachyderms. Previously employed in the logging business outlawed in Thailand in 1989, the elephants nowadays have little to occupy their time and, in a turn of events started 20 years ago by two Russian conceptual artists, some are trained to paint pictures.
On the day of his visit, after the elephants bathed in a big pond at the conservation camp, Smith recalled, the trainers – called “mahouts” – brought out a big paint box and easels affixed with blank paper. Three elephants picked up paint brushes, holding them in a trunk or a nostril, and began to “paint these lines of flower stems and elephant shapes,” Smith said. “I was just amazed. I had heard about elephants painting, but I thought it was mostly abstract kinds of paintings that they did.”
A bit of subsequent research revealed that the Thailand conservation camp about 20 years ago invited the two Russian artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamud, who live in New York, to come and teach the elephants how to paint.
“They went over to this camp and they discovered that most elephants aren’t interested in painting, for whatever reason,” Smith said. “But a few of the elephants were curious and they picked up a brush and started making these huge strokes, up and down and around.”
“They do this with patient training,” he said, “and often verbal cues from the mahouts. There are variations from painting to painting, so no two paintings are exactly the same. Some have sky, sun, trees, flowers, water, grass. They are trained and they are doing them [the paintings] from memory.” Each painting is recorded in a ledger and imprinted with an embossed stamp to certify authenticity.
When it was suggested that the elephants follow a penciled outline, Smith firmly denied the idea. “To the best of my knowledge, the elephants at the Thai conservation center have never followed a pencil outline,” he said. “I have never seen them do this.” He suggested that some other elephant camps may use outlines during public shows, but not the conservation center he visits.
Since his discovery, Smith has kept in stock at least 20 elephant paintings to satisfy patrons who regularly stop by and ask for them. The work of the pachyderms generates supplemental income for his gallery and certainly lures visitors. “People just love the elephants,” he said. “They’re crazy for the elephants. They love the story behind the art, the background, and they love anything to do with elephants.”
Top price for a framed painting is $1,400. Smith shares the proceeds with the Elephant Conservation Center and the World Wildlife Fund. The gallery held an exhibit of elephant art in July and another is scheduled to begin right after Labor Day. “It creates such a good will and good feeling with people who love these paintings,” he said. “People will come in all year long even when we don’t have paintings up and ask about the elephants. … It’s part of the way people think about our business.” •
