This painting is an illustration of a folk tale from Southern Nigeria, and was done for an in-flight magazine for American Airlines.

In the tale,"Thunder" is an old, mother sheep, and "Lightning" is her son, a ram. According to the tale, "Whenever the ram got angry, he used to go about and burn houses and knock down trees; he even did damage on the farms, and sometimes killed people.

Whenever Lightning did these things, his mother used to call out to him in a very loud voice to stop" - but Lightning didn't pay attention to her, and whenever he was in a bad mood he would cause a large amount of damage. Eventually, the king of the village banished them from the earth - and they had to live in the sky.

"Ever since, when Lightning is angry, he commits damage as before, but you can hear his mother, the Thunder, rebuking him and telling him to stop. Sometimes, however, when the mother has gone away some distance from her naughty son, you can still see that he is angry and is doing damage, but his mother's voice cannot be heard."