I recently completed this portrait of a chimpanzee and there is a bit of a story behind it. A few months ago I decided to create a piece for consideration in a Canadian mosaic exhibition that typically takes place annually. The theme was “roots”. I pondered a number of possibilities - tree roots (too obvious maybe?), a portrait of my Dad who passed away a few years ago (not sure how I want to tackle that one yet), an abstract depicting the “Big Bang” (hmmm, that has merit). But as I was mulling it over in the shower one morning ( don’t we all do our best thinking in the shower?), I came up with the idea of doing a portrait of a chimpanzee. Yippee! I had my idea.

But wait. Once I read the rules regarding pieces that were eligible for submission, I realized my idea would not work. I was not allowed to use someone else’s photograph for reference, even if I had permission from them. The photograph had to be my own, and I did not have any pictures of chimpanzees.

I went back to the drawing board, and eventually came up with another idea. But in the meantime the exhibition has been postponed until next year, so I have lots of time to work on that one!

However, I could not get the idea of doing a pique assiette portrait of a chimpanzee out of my head. So I searched online, and eventually found a picture that fit with what I had in my mind. I contacted the photographer, and she graciously gave me permission to use her photograph as a reference picture for my mosaic. A big thank you to Linda, at LMET Nature Photography. Be sure to check out her Facebook page!

Why a portrait of chimp you ask? To begin with, it was about the “roots” theme. Nonhuman primates are our closest living biological relatives. But once I started researching primates to find a reference picture, I felt compelled to do this portrait as a way to highlight the plight of primates. Sixty percent of primate species are now threatened with extinction and more than that have declining populations. Extensive habitat loss due to such factors as expansion of industrial agriculture, large-scale cattle ranching, logging, oil and gas drilling and mining, as well as increased bushmeat hunting, the use of primates for medical research and the illegal trade of primates as pets and for body parts all contribute to the decline in primate populations.

Primates have a social and cultural importance in our world as well as an ecological importance. Unfortunately, they live primarily in areas that overlap with a large, rapidly growing, human population and where there is often high levels of poverty. Much needs to be done to reverse the risk of primate extinctions and at the same time to attend to the local human needs in sustainable ways.

Although I read several articles and visited multiple websites, most of the information I’ve provided here is from an article in Science Advances from 2017. If you are interested in reading more, check it out: Impending extinction crisis of the world’s primates: Why primates matter.

I was originally going to name this piece “How Did I Get Here?”, but given everything that is going on in our world these days, I decided on “How Did We Get Here?” instead.