Title: Guy Combes (1971- ), Ancestral Oasis
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 36 x 48
Frame dimensions: 48 x 60 x 3

Kenya is the place of my birth, and though a lifetime's experiences have taken me to a variety of spectacular places around the world, Africa always draws me back home; it's land, it's people, and its wildlife are ingrained in my DNA, and they express themselves with every brushstroke I make on canvas. Africa is a land with a unique narrative of great depth, complexity, and richness; far from making me complacent, my lifelong immersion in its mysteries have taught me that I could paint every day for the rest of my career and never tell the entire story. I have lived and worked in Kenya off and on my whole life, still spending time there nearly every year, and that has made me uniquely qualified to share an intimate knowledge of African Wildlife that goes far beyond that of the casual traveler. In my paintings I always attempt to do more than just open a window on a visual experience I've had, but to launch the viewers imagination with as real a representation of texture, temperature, behavior and form as possible, to communicate a veracity that only comes from frequent daily observation. That technical accuracy is coupled with a poeticism that is the natural result of a helpless affection for the place of my birth, a place that will no doubt continue inspire me to bring the story of its charismatic wildlife, awesome landscapes, and noble people to canvas for the rest of my life

signed lower right: Guy Combes © verso: titled, signed, dated