The Drakensberg escarpment lies a short distance from the Ardmore studios, and Injisuthi is drawn from the waterfalls and rock pools that run through it. The design is built as a single continuous scene rather than as a motif on a ground: water falls, pools collect, and the animals gather at the edges where they would actually gather.
Density is the point. Big cats hold the foreground, flamingos stand in the shallows, fish move below the surface, and the longer a wall of it is looked at the more of them appear. Ardmore's painters work in a tradition where every part of a surface is decorated, and that habit shows in the treatment of foliage and water, where nothing is left as a plain passage to rest the eye. The consequence in a room is that the pattern goes on giving long after the first impression has worn off.
Because the composition is a landscape, it wants a wall it can occupy. A dining room, a small library, the back of a hall, anywhere the scene can turn a corner and meet itself, will suit it better than a single feature panel. It sits well with unfussy furniture and plain upholstery, which leave the drawing to carry the room on its own.
