"A witty piece about the mistakes in meaning of a well-known ape! The orang-utan; a magnificent and beautiful creature. Our closest relative, and a symbol of compassion, caring and thoughtfulness. These arboreal apes are majestic, playful, caring toward their young, and never hurt a soul, but are now faced with the dangers of mankind. Their homes are being destroyed, they are attacked, beaten and shot, for the so called name of progress...and they are our relatives!!

As a child I was as much fascinated with the wonderful apes as I am today. With their magnificent and telling faces, I would look at them for hours and see so much wonder in their faces. At the early age however, I was always under the impression that Orang-Utan was a foreign way of saying Orange Man. I guess I was thinking that their name was derived from the fact that they were so orange in colour. It was only much later that I discovered that the word "Orang-Utan" actually translates as "Man of the Forest", which seems even more sad and poignant, as their lives are being erased from their forest homes.

The image, like many of my others is a combination of elements that have come together to make a story image. I also, due to the youthful ignorance in the name meaning, wished to combine elements of the colour 'orange' as well as the fruit itself. Then I luckily discovered that the Orang-Utan's favourite food is orange. However, in the Borneo areas, the orange is green. So an additional element was born into the image. Not only was there a misconstrued angle on their name, but they themselves have corrected the colour disassociation in the green oranges. And so the image comes together."

Take a look at Rob's websites www.robsnow.org or www.behance.net/RobSnow