My artistic style flows directly from my writing. When I write, images rise naturally to illustrate my stories. The text below is the inspiration behind this piece.
 
 Madame Daphne raised her daughter and elephant orphan Fatuma together. Fatuma naturally tried to protect the girl under her belly as mother elephants do with their calves. Madame Daphne had no fear that Fatuma would ever trample her daughter. Moreover, when Fatuma was an adult in the wild, she and another elephant protected her husband when they found him alone in the dark. They walked on both sides of him for several hours until he made it home. “I felt as one with them in their world, entirely dependent on them for my safety, sheltered and protected as if I were one of their own,” he told Madame Daphne.
 My picture illustrates my experience when I visited Larro who was then two years old. After a milk bottle, her caretaker fed her the sap of tree branches. “She loves the sap of trees,” he said. He was going to sleep next to her that night as young orphans at Sheldrick are never left alone. They are looked after around the clock by caretakers who exude genuine affection. The constant company helps the orphans heal from their traumatic experiences and grow up healthily.
 The Buddha demonstrated his belief in the interbeing between species when he learned the language of elephants while he lived among them. He also demonstrated his belief in the interbeing between social classes when he chose rural, untouchable children as the first people to instruct in The Way. It was as though he was greeting these outsiders with one of my favorite of Thay’s phrases: “A lotus for you, a Buddha to be.”  When untouchable orphan Svasti turned 18 years-old, the Buddha returned to his village to invite him to join his community of interbeing. The Buddha believed that all children have the capacity for enlightenment and that they are “our children” no matter how marginalized their ancestors.
From my book Walking on Earth with Thich Nhat Hanh (p. 195)