I’ve been trying to make a painting of the  rainforest of Central America since we went on a fabulous trip to the jungles of Belize and Guatemala back in 2013. This painting started well, and then I got stuck and sidetracked by other projects. Last year we visited the Costa Rican rainforest and I knew I must continue with this painting. But once again, I got sidetracked. I was on the verge of abandoning it altogether, when my sister-in-law saw this painting – unfinished – in my studio, and said how much she liked it. Just that one comment was enough to spur me on to finish it.

Biodiversity

The jungles of Central America are especially beautiful and biodiverse – and dense! There is nothing to see except trees, green shapes, more trees, light and dark dapples, even more trees, and glimpses of fabulous creatures of all shapes and sizes.  That makes it all rather fleeting and hard to paint.

In my painting I have shown just a few of the creatures that live in the jungles there:  a coatimundi ambles across the forest floor in the bottom left hand corner, an ocelot lurks beneath foliage in the bottom right hand corner, a sloth hangs from tree, a tamandua clambers down a tree hunting for ants’ nests, a magenta-throated woodstar hummingbird, zips through from the right and higher up in the trees, a violatious trogon on the left and a pale-billed woodpecker on the right.