Where the Water Remembers Their Strength

Reflections from the making of my buffalo oil painting

When I began this piece, I wasn’t thinking of buffaloes at all.
I was thinking of movement — the kind that feels ancient, instinctive, almost spiritual.

I remembered a moment from my childhood in Senegal:
watching animals thunder toward the river at dusk, their silhouettes trembling in the heat of the air, the ground shaking before the water did.

That memory stayed with me for years.
When I finally touched the canvas, it returned with overwhelming force.

Painting the buffaloes running through the river was not about capturing the animals themselves, but about honoring their energy — their raw power, their urgency, the wild unity that exists between body, land, and water.

Every drop of water in the painting is a heartbeat.
Every splash is a reminder that nature is louder than anything we can put into words.

While working on the piece, I kept asking myself:

“How do I make someone feel the moment, not just see it?”

The answer was in the brushstrokes — fast, layered, almost chaotic — mirroring the thunder of hooves breaking the river’s calm.

This painting is not only about buffaloes.
It’s about the memory of movement, the poetry of nature, and the strength we often forget lives within us.