Jealous Zebras

We were strolling along Kalendegatan in Malmö four Saturdays ago, in the general direction of our hotel, when I caught sight of a painting through a shopfront window: a square painting of two zebras on a bright red background. I pointed it out to my wife, who, like me, took an immediate shine to this canvas. She suggested we take a closer look. Once inside the shop - whose main business seemed to be in leather-upholstered sofas and chairs - we observed that the painting was for sale, and was, moreover, affordably priced. There were other red-grounded paintings too, featuring other African fauna such as giraffes, but the pair of zebras remained our favourite. When we asked the man at the desk at the back of the store if we could buy the painting, he said that we could, but only if we waited a couple of weeks until he had obtained another canvas from the same artist, with whom he had an on-going arrangement, so that he could keep that same wall-space occupied. We knew that we would soon be returning to Malmö, so it was no trouble for us to agree to the shop-owner’s condition. As we left, the man mentioned to me in passing that the painting was entitled Jealous Zebras.

On our next visit, then, two Fridays ago, we returned to the shop to pick up the jealous twosome. The man from before wasn’t there, but, in his place, there was an elegantly-dressed and bejewelled woman in her late fifties or early sixties who took the canvas off the wall and then attempted to wrap it for us in thick brown paper and a flattened IKEA cardboard box. As she struggled with this task, she first apologised that her English was not so good, before explaining that I am the mother: this is my son’s business and then, at length, exhibiting a sound enough grasp of English idiom, when, frustrated by a length of tape’s refusal to stick, she exclaimed this sucks! We brought the painting home the next day, and hung it in what we thought would be the ideal spot, above the loveseat in the downstairs lounge.

All I know about the artist is that she is a woman - the shop-owner never mentioned a name but used female pronouns when referring to her. Nor do I know what her zebras are jealous about. My theory is that, although they are looking away in the same direction, that they are secretly and obsessively jealous of each other…

Update: 01/02/05—I’m happy to say that the artist of Jealous Zebras has been in touch: her name is Eira Fogelberg and she lives in Helsingborg, here in Sweden. And she has a web-site: click here to see it.