Painting for the National Geographic.
About two months ago Deleo received an assignment from National Geographic magazine.
He was asked to create an illustration to accompany an article about the dodo, in which paleontologist Leon Claessens states that the dodo was not so much a stupid and clumsy animal, but rather a very unlucky one. The title of the article: “The tragic fate of the Dodo”
Deleo really enjoyed the study and research to determine how the bird, that went extinct more than 300 years ago, must have looked like. Few contemporary paintings and drawings of the animal survived. Most of the artists, just like Deleo, had never seen a living species. His version also blends fact and fiction. However, he closely examined a skull kept by the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, a painting (1625) by the Mughal artist Ustad Mansur and the drawings made by Joris Joostensz Laerle during the voyage of the VOC Gelderland in 1602, among many other resources.
In the painting that Deleo made, the (flightless) bird frozen in mid air, refers to it’s seemingly inevitable extinction. The egg, held up very carefully by the bird, symbolizes the struggle for survival (and the revival attempts by humans). Remains of the egg are considered to be the holy grail in Dodo research, and have, until now, never been found.
Deleo tried to depict the dodo in a somewhat unexpected way, but at the same time make references to well-known images and assumptions about the animal. The posture deliberately resembles that of a found fossil of an archaeopteryx. Both, the dodo and the archaeopteryx, are famous but unfortunately extinct. In the posture one could also recognize a reference to seventeenth century still life paintings with hunting trophies. This because the extinction of the dodo, unlike the disappearance of the archeopteryx, is entirely due to humans (directly or indirectly).
The final artwork made with acrylic paint is published in the October edition of the Dutch version of the magazine. A video showing the process of creating the artwork can be seen here.