My favourite lighting for any painting - late evening backlight! This painting is of the Sapi floodplain acacia forests of the Zambezi Valley - an area I first became familiar with on a long school holiday in the 1960s. The area at that time had just transitioned from being a hunting area to inclusion in a much expanded Mana Pools National Park which at that moment in time became known for a while as the Zambezi Valley National Park (not to be confused with the Zambezi Valley National Park that occurs along the full length of the opposite bank of the Zambezi River in Zambia!) As anyone who knows these two series of floodplains, this is a very atmospheric place to be when the sun begins to set. The huge floodplain acacia trees frame every view and are made even more interesting when dust is kicked up by animals on the way to or back from one of the pools. The forest take on the apearance of stage scenery cut-outs - two dimensional layers that fade off into the distance - with elephant, buffalo and eland mysteriously negotiating corridors of light in wherever direction one looks. In other words this is an area that is cinematic, moody and almost paints itself into a masterpiece without any help from the artist. It gets very hot here (45degC) and there are tsetse fly as well - all factors that make this a place of extremes - extreme beauty, extreme ruggedness, extreme animals and extereme memories!