In the summer of 2024, I traveled alone to Indonesia, the farthest geographical point from my native Colombia. Reaching the island of Nusa Penida, just off the coast of Bali. I spent two months between Bali and Nusa Penida, accompanied by a book of poems by the Sufi poet Hafiz, by nature, and by the quiet companionship of everything I saw and dreamed.

The aerial distance between this corner of Indonesia and Bogotá is about 18,800 kilometers, a figure that seems to whisper the stretch between my childhood and my adulthood.

Without a studio, I began drawing in small notebooks, coloring with crayons, the simple, “ordinary” colors of children’s books. Returning to such colors felt almost childlike: a release, and a conscious departure from the academic ideals that often frame the life of a contemporary artist. The choice was practical; I was working in a small notebook, but it was also emotional: an instinctive return to the innocent colors that came to me naturally when I opened my soul to the poetry of the world.

The use of these “everyday” colors, unburdened by academic technique, became a metaphor: a deliberate turning away from rigor toward emotional truth, toward something a little naïve. The result is this series of small drawings, carrying the meeting of poetry and place, and the inner journey that unfolded in between.