The Last Lion

You always pour yourself into every painting. I didn't realise how much till I finished it 40 years later.

I Picked it up the other day and said to myself either finish it or paint over it. Maybe that is why it had been sitting in a bin gathering dust for all those years. waiting for me to catch up?

As I worked over this canvas I realized The lions struggles echoes many of mine.

He is the last of his kind, the king of a fading kingdom, a sole survivor of a the world that is vanishing around him. This rugged, desert-worn creature has known both sun-baked ridges and the freezing bite of night. He is weary, yes, but not defeated. The lions eyes are locked on the distant horizon where danger and hunger meet the rush of the coming evening .
Around him, the desert carries a quiet calm. This big cat Creeping through shadows under a ancient cedar tree that holds memories in its coarse bark, this aging barren tree stands stubbornly, not yet fallen to the ravages of time. The red rock walls stand as age old testaments, lines carved into their buttes like pages in a my diary I do'nt write in anymore. Even the distant blue silhouette of Signal Peak is a warning sentential, the pioneers knew that it signaled the change of seasons, now a reminder the world has moved on in the name of progress, a destroyed habitat, fragile threads, frayed and tugged until it can no longer hold the tapestry of life.
This mountain lion the last of its kind, symbolizes quiet endurance, a powerful truth: that courage means continuing to persevere when the future is uncertain. The range of his world is shrinking, his presence disappearing this emblem of a the wilderness is almost gone.

Me seeing skills that were once earned over years of experience and practice now completed in seconds with AI.
As a creator I want the world to see whats slipping away. This is why I painted the Last Lion, to give voice to a creature who carries the weight of his kind on his shoulders and to give life to my own aging flame.
If Im lucky, my art will outlive me, hanging in quiet rooms where someone pauses long enough to feel the moment I captured on canvas in a story that will soon become memory.

The Last Lion is'nt just a portrait of loss; its a promisethat we, too, can leave behind a trace that outlives our days, a memory of life, craft, and care for a land that may not endure in the form we once knew. May this painting be a quiet beacon: that while the world moves on, human created art can hold us, and be remembered and loved, long after the last roar fades.