'When you go on safari nowadays you will almost certainly get close up views of leopard. It was not always like that. In the last couple of decades leopards have been deliberately habituated by modern safari operators. Before that when tourists were few and far between, in Botswana, you could go several months on safari and have just a fleeting glimpse of one of these cats.
This painting is based on a leopard I saw at Lechwe Haven in the Okavango in Botswana. The setting sun glinted in one of its eyes and it started flicking its tail which was a sure sign that it was getting irritated. Then it got up stretched, walked off the anthill and then across a shallow portion of the flooding countryside into a palm thicket and disappeared. I returned to the same place a couple of times every day over the next few weeks but I never saw it again. I feel that it's important for me to add here that the total number of leopards I saw between 1978 and 1996 was 11! Not that many because they were very difficult to see in Botswana in that era. Three of those sightings were exceptional sightings that lasted for several hours. The others were fleeting glimpses. They were rarely seen but very common. It was frustrating because I would hear them calling virtually every night but was never able to catch them out in the open during the day.'

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