Studio journal
From Poo to Dreams
On 9 January 2025, while visiting an elephant sanctuary in Sabaraganuwa near Kandy, Sri Lanka, I discovered a small workshop making handmade paper from elephant poo. Intrigued by the transformation of waste into something delicate and beautiful, I bought five sheets and carried them with me to Phuket. A few weeks later, at the end of January, these unusual surfaces became paintings, works born from travel, curiosity and the quiet alchemy of turning unexpected materials into dreams.
Some journeys continue long after you have left the place itself.
On 9 January 2025, I visited an elephant sanctuary in Sabaraganuwa, close to Kandy, Sri Lanka. Next to the sanctuary was a small workshop producing handmade paper from elephant poo. I was fascinated by the process. There was something poetic about it: something discarded, transformed by hand into paper with its own texture, colour and history.
Without knowing why, I bought five sheets.
The paper travelled with me from Sri Lanka to Phuket, Thailand, where I was spending the winter. For several weeks the sheets remained untouched, quietly waiting. Then, at the end of January 2025, while staying in Nai Harn, the paintings finally revealed themselves.
The five sheets became two independent works: the diptych Spellbound and the triptych Waiting, I Can Feel You and Between Nothing Else.
The origin of the paper remains inseparable from the paintings themselves. They carry with them the memory of the elephants, the landscape of Sri Lanka and the journey south to Phuket, where they ultimately found their final form.
There is a beautiful cycle in this story:
an elephant consumes the landscape, the landscape becomes paper, the paper travels, the paper becomes painting, and the painting becomes memory.
Sometimes art begins with an image or an idea.
Sometimes it begins with five sheets of paper bought in a small shop beside an elephant sanctuary.
