Samburu belongs to a body of work inspired by Medford Johnston’s travels in Kenya and Tanzania in 1987. Johnston, who is based in Atlanta, studies the interplay between line, form, and color in works that echo the give-and-take interdependency between people and nature. In this work, Johnston’s color choices suggest the rusty color of the earth around the Ewaso Nyiro River; the river itself, whose name means “brown water”; and isolated outcroppings of verdant oases.