Sharing my art with the village

By Rebekah Farris – 4 week intern

When you’re living in the jungle, you can expect the accommodations to be pretty simple and the bathroom is no exception. So when I was able to paint the walls of the new bathroom and shower as a side project to my internship, I thought it would be great to represent some of the beautiful things you can see while in Ban Naklang Village as well as throughout Thailand.

For my painting I decided to draw an elephant who, in my opinion, is one of the most photogenic elephants I’ve seen while volunteering at Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary, Mae Doom. When hiking to see the female elephants each week I almost always brought my camera and I was lucky enough to capture some good shots of Mae Doom. She seemed like the perfect subject for my painting.

One of my favorite parts of interning at KSES and living in the village is getting to be integrated into the community and so it was especially meaningful to share my art with everyone here. I also was able to create some digital pieces of some of the people in the community. The community here has been so welcoming and it felt like they gave me so much in such a short amount of time. Sharing art with them is a small way for me to give back a little and show how much each experience meant to me.

The photos of my art shown below are:
1. A painting of Mae Doom inside the staff bathroom