Created by Artist Alex Beard for the Emeril Lagasse Foundation

Alex Beard is a painter and an author who lives in New Orleans. He is the creator of a unique style of painting called “Abstract Naturalism” and is considered by many as a successor to the school of visual mathematics championed by M.C. Escher.  Alex has a collection of illustrated children’s picture books called “Tales from the Watering Hole” and a series of Impossible Puzzles for adults, plus many other products created to extend the dialog between the artist and the consumer.  He is a firm believer that art is a medium that should be accesible to everyone.

Alex is an adventurer who has traveled extensively through the world’s most untouched and remote wildernesses during his extended journeys through Africa, India, Australia, the Americas and Asia.

Alex uses uncommon avenues to share the creative experience with people of all ages.  In addition to his exhibition and book tour schedules, Alex brings his Kids’ Day events to schools, libraries, museums, bookstores and zoos throughout the country.  Utilizing his unique combination of story telling and art activities, Alex has had the opportunity to draw, paint and talk about art with tens of thousands of children.  Some of the stories he tells are about his adventures in various parts of the world.

Alex created the Carnivale du Vin pig in the middle of a six month book tour.  He was briefly back home in New Orleans and created a sketch, usually his “under painting” which would eventually have oil paint on top. The pig sketch took about an hour to create and then he was off again on his book tour.  Several weeks later, on returning, he revisited his pig sketch, with every intention of beginning his oil painting.  But once he looked at it, he realized it ” was all that it should be”.  It’s certainly hard to imagine that it could be more expressive in its joyful pigness.

I asked Alex what had inspired this drawing of a pig and that’s when he started talking about his summer vacations.  From the age of 15 (or 16) until he was 22, he went to East Africa to his uncle’s camp called Hog Ranch, named for all the warthogs in the area.  He slept in a tent with his monkey “Radio”, a camp pet who was also his alarm clock.  Every morning, when it was time to wake up, Radio would sit on his chest and was generally rather mischevious, which sounds about right for a monkey.

He also had a friend in Ole Leggi, an elderly three legged warthog who had survived a leopard attack.  That was remarkable even if she did lose the use of her back leg.  The Masai people use the word “ole” as a sign of respect when addressing someone, just as we say Miss Betty, or Mr. Ray.  Ole Leggi was wise and a sort of aunt to a large family of pigs.  Not all the warthogs were quite as social, “thaka” means ugly in Swahili and one of the thaka boars actually knocked Alex over.

But it was Alex who fed and scratched and hung out with Ole Leggi, which is why she was always outside his tent first thing every morning.  That is until one morning, when Radio did his usual alarm clock routine and Alex woke to find Ole Leggi outside the tent with a tribesman’s arrow deep in her side.  He couldn’t pull it out and the nearest Veterinarian was in Nairobi.  Alex mounted the Ole Leggi rescue mission, a low tech version of a medivac helicopter, but it wasn’t easy.  Ever try to get a warthog to do something other than what it wants to do?  Using a combination of blow gun and the same serum that is used to tranquilize a rhinoceros,  it took four tries to get the serum into her, warthog hide being what it is, and for her to slow down enough to be rescued.

Then they had to lift her and load Ole Leggi into the vehicle, at which point there was some discussion of a bbq instead, drive to Nairobi, do surgery to remove the arrow, get her back into the vehicle, then drive through heavy traffic and a military checkpoint on the way back to Hog Ranch, all of which took some time.  She woke up before they got back home and was so not a happy warthog!  Somehow, they got back but things did not look very promising.  Ole Leggi just lay in the grass, slowly, very slowly dragging herself into the woods.   Alex sat beside her on a stool, talking to her, reading to her and moving along with her on his stool.  Finally, she was gone, into the woods.  Alex left for a month on safari and on his return found that Ole Leggi had not been seen since he left.

Then, on the morning he was leaving Africa, Radio did his alarm clock thing and there was Ole Leggi was standing outside his tent and looking feisty.  Alex’s next book will be about the remarkable Ole Leggi.  He had been sharing her story with the children on his Kids’ Days for three months straight before he drew our Carnivale pig.

The remarkable Ole Leggi

Years later, Alex met another very special pig on Jamie Wyeth’s farm in Pennsylvania, where there was a barn full of various farm animals.  Jamie’s pig, Baby Jane, the subject of many paintings and photographs, was a very different sort of pig from Ole Leggi, but also a source of inspiration.  Alex had originally thought that the Carnivale pig would perhaps draw on Baby Jane as a model, but Ole Leggi was clearly his muse. 

Alex had further pig adventures including a spring vacation while at Tufts University.  He drove with a group to Savannah and went boar hunting in a rice field.  They shot the boar, cut it in quarters and drove it back to their fraternity house in Boston.  Alex used the special citrus marinade from Hog Ranch for the bbq’d boar, made with lemons, oranges and grapefruit.  The bbq’d boar was spectacular, although I think the 900 mile road trip probably helped with the tenderizing.

Naturally, we also discussed sausage.  When he lived in the Upper East Side of New York, Alex would go over to Germantown between 86th Street and First and Second Avenues to enjoy sausages, particularly the Munich white sausage called Weisswurst made with both pork and veal and served with sauerkraut.  When he first got to New Orleans, journalist Chris Rose took him in hand and off to a Friday night football game.  On the way, Chris stopped at a gas station and got them some boudin wrapped in tin foil and said “Just eat it”.  Alex said his first boudin was delicious.  I asked about whether he has certain foods he eats when drawing, or painting.  “I am sort of like a Kenyan runner, or perhaps a bit like a snake,  I eat huge meals and then languish, other than ice tea or coffee, I don’t eat until I am done.”

Thank you Alex for sharing Ole Leggi in both story and art.  Can’t wait for the book!  Love our Carnivale pig!

Created by Artist Alex Beard for the Emeril Lagasse Foundation