Self Potrait As A King (A Royal Encounter)

Framed like a carved relic, the scene stages a quiet confrontation between human reverie and monumental memory: a seated figure in cool blues drifts into contemplation as two elephants—weathered, almost fossil-like—meet in a tender crossing of trunks. The turquoise sky reads as an opening into the sacred, yet the web of scaffolding bars the animals like a cage of progress, suggesting preservation that simultaneously restrains. Roses punctuate the composition as insurgent notes of tenderness—love, devotion, mourning—softening the severity of stone bas‑reliefs and reminding us that beauty often survives as offering, not ornament. Across these layered scales—miniature passersby, temple friezes, colossal bodies—the work becomes a meditation on what we build to remember and what is lost in the act of building.