The Elephant.
An African elephant meeting you head-on, ears spread wide. Painted in acrylic with a raised, textured surface and hand-finished in 24-carat gold leaf, so the colour of the work shifts with the direction of the light. Its highlights hold a second secret: they glow after dark.
- Artist
- Whan Amador
- Medium
- Textured acrylic with luminous highlights, hand-finished in 24-carat gold leaf
- Support
- Stretched canvas, gallery-wrapped edges
- Size
- 100 × 100 cm · 3.5 cm deep
- Edition
- Unique original · signed by the artist
- Provenance
- From the artist's studio
- Certificate
- Certificate of authenticity signed by the artist
- Care
- Handle by the edges and avoid touching the gold. Keep out of direct sun and damp.
- Reference
- WA-ART-002
- Shown at
- Benahavís, Coto Restaurante, August 2026 – present
- Location
- On display at Coto Restaurante, Benahavís · private viewing by appointment
- Price
- On request
- Purchase
- The buyer's identity is verified before sale, as Spanish anti-money-laundering law requires.
The light gives it
a life of its own.
By day The Elephant reads as warm, soft and pale. At night it becomes another painting. The surface is built up in texture, so every ridge of the ears and trunk throws its own small shadow, and the gold leaf answers whichever way the light comes from.
There is a quieter layer still. The highlights are picked out in luminous paint that gathers the sun's energy through the day. As the light fades towards sunset they begin to glow softly on their own, and at any hour of the night a single light turned towards the canvas brings them back to life.
Move a lamp, or walk past it with a single light, and the gold shifts from bronze to bright yellow while the darker passages fall back. The film beside this text shows exactly that: one light, moving across the canvas.
Signed by
the hand that made it.
Each work is signed on the face of the canvas in gold. At 100 × 100 cm on a deep frame, The Elephant hangs without a surround: the canvas wraps cleanly around the edges, so it can go straight onto the wall as it is.
It suits a large wall that is seen both in daylight and in the evening: a sitting room, a stairwell, a dining room lit by lamps rather than ceiling lights.
See it change in person.
The Elephant currently hangs at Coto Restaurante, on the Ronda road above Benahavís, a few minutes from La Zagaleta, where it can be seen during opening hours. It can also be viewed privately in Málaga or on the Costa del Sol, by day or in the evening, and we can advise on lighting it in your own space.
Arrange a viewing ↗