'Some paintings remind me of specific places. This is one of those paintings. The place and occasion was a few hundred yards beyond the old fly chamber at Shorobe, which was an hours drive from Croc Camp in Maun, Botswana. This was where everyone's vehicle was sprayed to kill any tsetse flies one might have picked up in the Moremi fly belts. After one of these occasions I drove on and then pulled over into the shade of a tree right next to the track. Here I ventilated the cab of my Land Cruiser and clothes which stank with the odor of the insecticide spray. I wound the windows down and flung the doors wide open. Then I noticed the snake eagle perched on one of the branches overhead. What was unusual was that it was only three metres away from me and it stayed there for the next 30 minutes as I busily sketched away. Sometimes opportunities arise that never repeat themselves and this was one of them, in the burning mid-day heat of of a dusty African track a short distance from the fly chamber shed!'

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