Casual Blasphemy

From the Original Oil Painting, 100x100cm, by Max Taylor, 2023

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Why do they call the Lion the king of the Jungle? They dont even live there. Surely it’s Tigers, right?

Every night in the Jungle I rehearsed a Mantra, grilling the words down deep into my mind. It went:

If its a Rhino - climb a tree

If its a Sloth Bear - attack first.

If its a Leopard - act big, be loud.

If its a Tiger - Stand tall, and communicate through your eyes

If its a herd of Elephants - be calm

If its an lone Bull Elephant - RUN.

The Tiger might be King of the Jungle, but the Elephant is GOD.

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Where to begin ….

I painted this in 2023, beginning in Istanbul and finishing in Amsterdam. Took me probably 150 hours.

The painting holds a single hair within the eye of the Tiger. A hair I plucked from the forest floor while tracking a blood trail to a Tigress in Jungles of Western Nepal. We ended up just 3 meters from one another.

I could yap a long time about this, but ill save it. I think my next book will be “The Fool’s Guide to Tracking Tigers.”

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Man im too tired to write well, but Ill give you a brief story of the inspiration behind this piece ….

I spent a month with a tribe of Bedouin in Jordan. They were a remarkable people, surviving out of time in a land they belonged to, but which no longer belonged to them. My host was the son of the former Sheikh - the tribal leader - I gathered the title did not pass to him because the title ceased to exist when his people were forced from their homes in the cave dwellings of Petra to a slum of impovereshment out of sight and mind from the hilton Hotels and tourist masses which come to explore the dead city of the ancient Nabateans.

I was shown a photograph of my host’s great-great-Grandfather - a black and white and time-stained photo of a bearded man with gaunt features sitting atop an Arabian Stallion with his robes billowing in the dry wind. It dated from sometime in the late 1800s. My host claimed this man killed the Last Lion of Arabia - I didnt even know lions existed in Arabia. Shortly after (speaking in terms of decades), the British came and rallied the tribes to fight the Ottomans and the Bedouin way was crushed by the sands of time and currents of industrialization and the politicizing of nations by colonial influence and god im just too tired to write right now. Find me in person and ill tell you all the more.

I call this piece The Last Lion, not for the actual animal this man may or may not have killed, but because in the destitute living room of my host’s home, a room with two cushions and no spoons (he sold his spoons during covid) - I looked upon this faded photograph wondering if this man was the last lion of his people.

This oil painting kicked my ass and I loved it. I got to invent so many different colors. Probably took around 200 hours. The original measures 90x90cm.

The Big Moos - 2023. An original Oil painting by Max Taylor.

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They came to me in a dream. These cows of muted vibrance. A point of calm in a technicolor blizzard. A pastel vision of prudential judgment; they watched like I was some intruder to their cubist construct. The blizzard surged and the cows vanished in my awakening.

Since 2019 I thought about those cows and that dream. I tried often to paint them or sketch them or capture the Moos in some form or another, but every time my brush touched canvas their image would vanish from my mind. It's like I couldn't dream and manifest at the same time; some disconnect in my brain … until last year.

2022 I spent a lot of time with cows. The lowland Moos and the high altitude Moos. Pakistani Moos and Himalayan Yaks. Somewhere along the way in my meditations of constant wander, that wire in my brain connected and the vision came back, this time with brush in hand. 

I began this painting in Istanbul until my deportation and ultimately finished it April 2023 in my new home in Amsterdam. This was a hard fought piece that taught me immensely about my tenacity and determination to make dreams reality.