Day 34

'Elephant in the Room'. Pen and Watercolour on Paper

Something I said I was hoping to do more of was to incorporate colour and also introduce an element of painting  as it gives me a further avenue of experimentation. This is exactly what I've decided to do with today's 'draw' a study of the skeletal remains of an elephants foot, something that I came across whilst in the Ulster Museum a few weeks back.

When I saw this it automatically brought to mind that old adage about there being 'an elephant in the room' and in this case almost quite literally. As I'm sure you're aware the idiom it self relates to there being an issue that is particularly obvious to all those present, yet no one wants to discuss it, mostly as it may be deemed inappropriate or cause discomfort. It's like having an actually elephant in a room, impossible to overlook... but for those that concern themselves with trivialities and irrelevance, for those too afraid to face the issue head on it's quite easy to ignore. It is one of those things that we have all experienced at some point whether directly of indirectly, we know that the issue exists but to refer to another well known idiom we bury our head in the sand rather than deal with it. It can be something that affects us personally and singularly, or it can be something that affects the dynamic of a group of people... in any case though what is it then that causes us to ignore the glaring obvious circumstances before us. I think for the most part it's our preoccupation of what other people will think of us that inhibits us from actually bringing the issue to light in the first place. This is also further exacerbated by that feeling that we are all guilty of falling foul to, that being that it will sort itself out or I'll deal with it later. If we are completely honest though this is rarely the case instead it just gets to a stage where the issue reaches its tipping point, it is then that it either transitions into some sort of resolution or it implodes... collapsing around the gravity of the situation that was created. Some of us are lucky enough to be able to acknowledge these 'elephants in the room' early enough that they can be dealt with fairly swiftly, on the other hand though there are definitely those of us that tend to end up with more 'elephants' than they have actual room. These types of circumstances are going to be unavoidable, there are always going to be times when there is an obvious problem that we just don't feel we can deal with in that instance. However this is by no means a bad thing it is how we deal with these circumstances either when we are first confronted with them or at a later time that helps us to grow and develop. We are all going to make mistakes, a faux pas or two and it is with this in mind I think it's important to consider the following... you don't learn from getting things right, instead you learn from making a complete and utter balls of things, picking yourself up and trying again.