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"There," he said and stood up. "That's your voice. What could you do to express that sense of outrage?"
I shook my head. "I don’t know…"
Sefton turned to look at the elephants. "When you figure that out, you'll have found your voice and maybe, you might produce something that is truly art. If you can't think of how to express your feelings with pencils or paint or clay, then stick to activism. Art is expressing your voice using artistic media. It's not mimicry."
With that, he walked away from me and went back to his own work. I sat in stunned silence, pain filling me that he found my work lacking. My cheeks heated and it wasn't the African sun.
Was he right? Was my drawing fit for nothing other than my own closet? Was it nothing more than basic mimicry?
I felt completely disheartened at that point and drew half-heartedly. I wanted to rip up my paper and burn it. With a few sentences, Sefton had succeeded in completely destroying my view of myself as a budding artist.
I watched the elephants for a moment, tears stinging at the corners of my eyes. Sefton was an accomplished artist. His art was on display in galleries in London and Paris and Manhattan. He was the artist in residence at the Institute. People used his art on album covers and posters, it was so popular.
He thought my work was technically skilled but not art. Mimicry.
The elephant mother moved closer to its calf, and rested its snout over the calf's head, in what could only be seen as an show of affection. The calf leaned in, as if it craved its mother's touch, its own trunk reaching up to touch that of its mother. The scene was touching.
The elephants were so beautiful, and obviously intelligent in their own way, with their own feelings and emotions and desires. The trade in ivory made me sick – to think that people killed the matriarchs for their ivory, leaving orphans to grow up without their mothers when clearly they loved each other – in an elephant way. It made my gut clench. Few things made me feel a need for violence, but this was one.
I removed my current drawing from the easel, and replaced it with a clean piece of paper. I picked up the binoculars and did a quick sketch of the mother and calf, focusing in on their bodies so that I could show their trunks, trying to quickly capture them as they touched. Instead of the elephants being small against a large landscape of trees and savannah, I decided to do a more intimate portrait of the two elephants. The entire page was elephant with no background.
To hell with Sefton.
I wanted to capture that moment, to show that these animals cared about one another and that they enjoyed touching. There was no need for them to touch. They chose to do it. It affected me deeply to witness it and that was why I wanted to draw it.
I took a photo before the elephants moved position. I'd do an acrylic of them when I went back to Nairobi, and I'd do it with as much detail and as much skill as I could. Whether it met the criteria for 'art', I didn’t care.
We had a break for tea and a snack at mid-afternoon, and I took the opportunity to use the makeshift tent lavatory. When I came out, Sefton was talking to the guard he'd just drawn. The guard adjusted the rifle over his shoulder, pulled out another cigarette and lit it while Sefton spoke with him.
Sefton turned and glanced at me as I passed. I felt his eyes on me as I returned to my easel with my cup of tea and sat examining my new drawing. The head and shoulders of the mother with the calf beneath her took up the entire paper. I had started to draw the detail of the mother's eye, capturing the long eyelashes, the tracks of moisture leading down from the corner of the eye. I grew hot enough from the heat of the late afternoon sun that I had to remove my shirt, which left me in the tank top I wore underneath, and fan myself for a moment to cool off before I continued to work on my sketch.
Sefton returned to my easel and stood in silence for a moment, watching me as I worked to capture the rough skin, with deep cracks and fissures.
"That's more like it," he said.
"What do you mean? It's still elephants."
"It is elephants," Sefton said, his voice chiding. "But at least now, you've made a choice and have chosen to show them doing something. Why did you choose that? There was a reason."
"I—"
"No," he said before I could explain my choice. "I don’t want you to tell me why you chose that. I should feel it when I look at your drawing."
I took my hand away from the drawing and sat there like a lump, frowning when Sefton examined the page.
"Come on, Kate," he said, frustration in his voice. "Why won’t you take the master class? I would help you – we would help you. Push you to develop your voice. The drawing class with Talia is entirely unnecessary. You don’t need practice drawing. You need to paint. You need to paint and paint and paint until you find your voice."
"You want to know why?" I said, anger getting the better of me. "Because you make me uncomfortable."
I didn’t look at him but I heard him chuckle.
"But you're engaged to that doctor," he said, his tone softly mocking. "You’re so in love, how could little old me make you uncomfortable?" he said and stepped closer to me. "Is it, perhaps, that I know of your inclinations?" Then he touched my shoulder where Drake had bitten me. I winced and pulled away from him, pulling on my shirt to cover it, forgetting that it was visible.
"Stop."
"So you like it a bit rough, do you?" he said, his voice low. "Or does he?"
"It's none of your business," I said, angry that he was so forward.
