Like all of my work, this piece is about duality. The great grey plodding rhinoceros, one of the heaviest, most colorless and earthbound of God’s creatures is here described with butterflies, the lightest, most brilliant and graceful inhabitants of this domain. The little bird, one of the attendants which feed off of the flies and ticks which inhabit the rhino’s rough skin, sits perched on the rhino’s horn, shooting the breeze with the big fellow, chirping juicy bits of gossip into his large lazy ears. Stories half invented, half remembered, today retold, and then half heard.

My rhinoceros was inspired by the great German Renaissance master, Albrecht Durer. His drawing of a rhino, done in 1515 A.D. and widely circulated throughout Europe as a print, was taken as a truthful eyewitness account of the then exotic and unknown beast. Only years later was it realized that his depiction was in many ways a fanciful creation based on secondhand knowledge and hearsay. Still today it is probably the most well known and loved depiction of a rhinoceros in all of Western art. I hope people speak well of my rhinoceros, even if he is a gossip. -Stephen Parlato-

-Stephen Parlato

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