PICS: STEVE LECLERQ

Sundar Kali holds a brush to the canvas before her and paints even lines with careful precision while her mahout helps her choose the colours. She is a 35-year-old elephant from Tiger Tops in Chitwan, who is used to carrying tourists on her back through the jungle on safaris.

But this winter, the elephants and their mahouts had something new to do: paint.It was all the idea of Ariane LeClerq, a student at Lincoln School in Kathmandu. Spending time at Chitwan lodges Machan Wildlife Resort and Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge, Ariane was able to go the farthest with two elephants?Sundar Kali and a five-year-old male, Khem Prasad (pictured).

"At first, the mahouts thought we were crazy," recalls Ariane, who has lived in Nepal all her life. She wanted to do this project after she read about how logging elephants in Thailand were taught how to paint after logging was banned and they and their mahouts were left jobless, begging for money on the streets. Now, Thailand even has an elephant orchestra where elephants play the percussion.

While Ariane and her mentor Richard Lair, an elephant expert in Thailand, struggled to teach reluctant elephants, Sundar Kali showed a hidden talent for art. Khem Prasad took a little longer to learn, but both now have paintings with their own distinctive styles. While Sundar Kali is more careful, approaching the paintings like a task, Khem is assertive and swishes his brush in random lines.

James A Giambrone, curator of the Indigo Gallery who is exhibiting the paintings, sold 17 works of elephant art on the first night. But not all feedback has been positive, some animal rights wallahs have complained that it is inhumane to force elephants to paint.

Ariane agrees to an extent but adds: "It would be great if they were wild. But the reality is that they are domesticated and will continue to be. It gives them something better to do than be chained all day."

The elephant's interest in painting was apparent, Ariane says. While other elephants were reluctant to learn, Khem Prasad and Sundar Kali, when unchained, approached the easel unprompted. Moreover, while painting, they focused on the canvas, "Other elephants merely move their trunks but their eyes are elsewhere," says Ariane.

All proceeds from the exhibition will go to Wildlife Conservation Nepal. Says Ariane: "I think this will help gain respect for elephants, so kids won't turn into poachers when they grow up."

The exhibition continues till
22 February at the Indigo Gallery, Naxal.