Ujung Kulon

Indonesia’s Ujung Kulon national park is the last place for the lesser Asian one horned rhinoceros to survive. Today the species is called Javan rhinoceros, and there aren’t many left, about 60 remain from a population that once ranged throughout the jungles of south east Asia from southern China to the Sundarbans Ganges delta in India, east to Vietnam and south to the island of Java. The narrative in the painting concerns responsible, guardianship of our natural world, because even under protection in Ujung Kulon the rarest rhinoceros species dangles on a thread in a small peninsular where poaching and invasive plant species critically affects the future of this awesome animal.