Moon Voyage

A pale pink elephant carries a crimson and gold howdah through a city of cream spires and domes, its rider seated under the canopy. Daniel Merriam painted it in thin watercolour in 2003: orange butterfly wings, red glass orbs hanging on threads, a blue-green serpent tail curling in at the lower left.

Merriam's washes shade from cream to gold with barely a hard edge, so the architecture is worked out by shape more than by colour. Finished size 73.6 x 50.8cm.