Artwork -12 Fragment 5

The muzzle of a zebra is almost abstract in itself. Its shape, texture and pattern contain so many unexpected lines and planes that, when I isolate it from the rest of the animal, it begins to lose its familiar meaning.

In this drawing I introduced another layer of the animal — the stripes of the body behind the muzzle. Rather than clarifying the form, they complicate it. The patterns begin to merge and overlap, and the distinction between one part of the animal and another becomes less certain.

I find that uncertainty intriguing. We are accustomed to looking at an animal as a complete form, recognising its head, its body, its features. But when those familiar boundaries begin to disappear, we are left looking at something more elemental: line, shape, texture, rhythm and movement.

The zebra remains present, but for a moment it becomes something else — an arrangement of forms that the eye can explore without needing to name.