How the Tiger Got His Stripes

Walton Ford, Thanh Hoang, watercolour, Gouache, pencil, and ink on paper (153.7 x 303.5 cm) 1997

I was flitting through my Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra (2007, Tashen) book, and I was looking at the appendix section and found out a few interesting stories that had proved inspiration for Ford's work. The one that caught my attention the most was the story linking to the above piece of work, Thanh Hoang (1997). The story read as follows:

Long, long ago, the tiger was a very beautiful creature indeed, famous for his immaculate and sleek yellow coat and his matching amber-coloured eyes. Truly, the tiger was the most elegant creature in the whole forest.

But one day, such a tiger was observing a nearby field from a grove at the edge of a mountain. In the field a farmer was ploughing with his buffalo. the toiling beast had become so exhausted that his mouth was dripping froth and his tongue hung out as he panted for breath. Still the farmer spurred him on, beating him with a stick and shouting at him to make greater effort. 

Seeing this mistreatment of a fellow animal, the tiger became furious. Cannily, he waited until the farmer had stopped for lunch and gone away to get refreshment. Then approaching the buffalo, the tiger scolded him for his stupid endurance. "You're far bigger and stronger than man," declared the tiger. "You have a huge body and two sharp horns to defend yourself with. Why then do you take such abuse? Why don't you stand up to this puny little fellow who takes such advantage of you?"

"Its quite true that the man is physically smaller than I am," replied the buffalo. "But he has a keen intelligence with which he can control all things in nature, even strong beasts like you and me."

Now the tiger had never heard of a weapon called keen intelligence, and he was extremely interested to know what it looked like. So he sat on a dike and waited for the farmer to return from his lunch.

"say there, you man," he cried when the farmer came back. "Your buffalo tells me you have a keen intelligence. Please let me see what it is. Where do you keep it?"

"I don't happen to have it with me," said the farmer "I usually keep it at home."

"do go home and get it," urged the tiger. "Fetch it here so I can see it!"

"I would do that," replied the farmer. "But I'm afraid that if I do, you will kill and eat my buffalo while I am gone. If you agree to let me bind you to that trunk of that tree over there, I'll go back home and get my intelligence and bring it back to show you; then I will unfasten you."

So the tiger being a credulous creature, permitted the man to fasten him securely to the tree with some wide strong ropes. 

But once he had immobilised the animal, the farmer began to collect straw and twigs, instead of starting home. He piled the straw and twigs and set them afire, exclaiming "Here is my intelligence! Do you understand now?"

The poor tiger, straining with all it might and main, burst his bonds and fled away into the forest, but not before the part of his fur between the ropes had burned black. Ever since then he has worn black and yellow stripes and has had a pretty good idea of mans intelligence!

(A Vietnamese story about how the tiger got its stripes, published in The Asian Animal Zodiac, collected by Ruth Q. Sun, Tuttle, 1974) 

I love this story and see many variations of it within my drawings. the obvious one is obviously illustrating the story as it reads, like how Walton Ford has done in his paining. However I quite like the idea of changing around the characters roles and perhaps having the buffalo as the tiger, the human as the ploughing beast and the tiger as the cunning human, or visa versa and so on. I can also see little situations like the Buffalo and the tiger being characters together in some other story, perhaps I could change the setting, changing it to a bank or a factory workroom, anything that will throw a whole new set of ideas into the smelting pot.

I really love the fact the story then becomes distorted, which usually happens with myth and legend. I'm just creating another version, how do I know in 50 or 100 years from now people will not believe my version? This has after all what has happened from the beginning of time until this present point - bible, myth, stories, all have been susceptible to a "Chinese-whisper" chain!

All these fractured viewpoints and ideas would help to create nutty and surreal pictures which suggest at many stories, hint at others, but never the less at the same time be utterly pointless - remind us of life as we know it? Aimlessly walking around wondering what happens next?

Right enough with the philosophy lets bring it back down to earth and ultimately my work practice! The idea that seems to becoming commonplace in my work is responding to prompts, whether that's through books, television, films, songs, twitter, Facebook, (the list goes on and on and on). I touched on this in my essay a few months ago, but didn't really have anything to 'respond' to in a sense, and as a result I felt this way of working didn't really seem relevant, or something I wanted to pursue. I then started to record the ideas i was having in real time in relation to real life and events. I have recently started recording things in a journals, drawing things, collecting info in blogger posts, tweeting interesting ideas, and it all now has formed a pool of inspirational influences. What happens this uni year is a mystery, but I hope is going to be twice as exhilarating as last year, watch this space its gonna be a bumpy ride!