“Cheetah in Kenya” Acrylic painting by Nadine Block
The cheetah is a magnificent animal, the fastest animal alive. The black tear marks below its eyes help shield them from the sun. It is a day hunter. Cheetahs are shy and solitary animals. Many tourists never see them in the wild. I painted a cheetah from a photo I took in 1998 on an African photo safari tour with my husband’s bar association. I propped my Nikon camera with a 400 mm lens on a bean bag on the edge of our open Land Rover and got several great photos of cheetahs. Our tour ended in Nairobi on the day of the August 7th bombing of the American Embassy where hundreds of people were killed. Our hotel windows were broken from the force of the blast over a mile away. Our plane that left Nairobi that night was the last one to do so for several days as the city recovered from the bombing.
