Hong

My last post featured a video of an elephant painting. It is watermarked with the website of Exotic World Gifts.

In various places on their site Mark Fangue & Liz Allen talk about how the video came about. Here are a few excerpts:

“While looking for beautiful products handmade by artisans in villages needing sustainable income, we came across this refuge camp for elephants in Northern Thailand. With camcorder in hand we began to witness an elephant painting an ‘Oh my God’ image of an elephant.

"The owner/operator is a very tender hearted woman who loves the animals and feels pain when her elephant camp is unjustifiably grouped with other camps and/or individuals where animal abuse is tolerated (it does exist and our goal is to educate and help stop cruel practices). We have done research and investigation into the camp’s training techniques and we have not observed any abuse. The elephants seem happy and well cared for.”

The painter featured in the video was given the name “Hong.”

“’Hong’ and her mahout (trainer) … collaborate[d] to produce a wonderful image of an elephant holding a flower. It was amazing to see her retrace lines and add her playful personality to her work of art. She draws one or two flowers depending on her mood and when finished painting her flower, she presented [sic] a flower to a person of her choice.

“Hong is an 8 year old female who has a very curious nature and loves to investigate everything and once managed to use her trunk to open the door of a truck. This kind of curiosity made Hong a natural candidate for artistic instruction. She has so much control and dexterity with her trunk which allows her to create more advanced realistic paintings ... and only started painting 2 years ago. [ellipsis in original] I had the pleasure of rewarding Hong with many bananas and sugar cane after she finished her painting that appeared in our video.”

This barely begins to answer my questions. More posts to come.