My Fierce Neighbors (Original Miniature)

Medieval style miniature portrait of two male lions at Zoo Atlanta.
Watercolor, ink, gouache, 24k gold leaf on animal skin vellum

I’ve long been obsessed with the lions that live only a few blocks from my home and studio. Back in the early 2000’s, if the wind was just right, when the leaves were off the trees, I could hear one lion’s frequent roaring from my own backyard. It was a most extroverted lion! Sadly, he passed of old age, and the shifts in our urban canopy no longer let the sounds of the others carry this far.

These lions are based on a photograph my son Skyler took on our visit in the spring of 2018. From their vantage point of their stacked boulders, the majestic males alternate between ignoring their visitors and briefly, grudgingly acknowledging us with a kind of mildly irritated noblesse oblige.