Many Hua Hin locals, along with tourists to the city, may have met Nang when they visited the Artist Village, also known as Baan Silapin, of which she is co-founder, along with her artist husband Tawee Kesa-Ngam and Khun Chumpon Donsakul. Khun Chumpon is now deceased, but his memory lives on, his bust proudly and respectfully on display in one of the small courtyards of the labyrinthine structure of the village. Nang and Tawee are grateful that his family are keen to honour his legacy by allowing the Artist Village to occupy his land in perpetuity. For Nang, Artist Village is her home, a studio, a workshop and a gallery as well as containing a cool, pleasantly air-conditioned coffee shop alongside a small lake. However, even more important than its physical setting is the fact that Artist Village is the strongly-beating heart of a community. At any one time there could be up to 20 artists working in the village. Some are biological family, others are “family of the heart”, art-lovers who converge around Nang, presumably because of her optimism, generosity and innate empathy.

Nang was born in the province of Ubon Ratchathanee in Thailand’s northeast 57 years ago, the fifth child of six in her family, and the only girl. Naturally enough, she was always comfortable around boys and happily joined in their play and adventures, with balls, bikes and toy guns, never caring about getting wet or dirty, a classic tomboy. Her elder siblings having broken the ground, by the time Nang was born, and a precious daughter, she was given a great deal of freedom to choose her own lifepath. Nang’s parents were both serving police officers, working in the accounts department and responsible for police salaries, yet in their own family life they were not strict at all, at least not with Nang.

A career in art seems to have crept up on Nang stealthily. At school, Nang was academically average, though a diligent student who always completed set tasks. Nang always enjoyed drawing and painting, but in the older grades was placed in the science stream, not the art stream. She recalls one particularly enjoyable History class project about a European woman, name now lost, whose image she was called upon to reproduce because of her superior skills. Art and crafts took up much of young Nang’s solo time and she had access to her mother’s sewing machine, to experiment with textiles.

Nang explains that Thai artists are typically identified and trained in a very disciplined fashion from a young age. Her husband Tawee is a classic example. They learn the fundamentals of drawing, painting and sculpture and engage in much skills practice while at art college before applying to complete an undergraduate degree at an art university such as Silpakorn or Chulalongkorn. Nang’s path into the world of art didn’t follow the norm, a fact she credits for the breadth of media and styles her art encompasses. While other young artists are taught the correct way to do things, Nang’s later entry into studying art meant she never was told what she wasn’t supposed to do. Nang is effectively “the little engine that could”, her unique but diverse style a product of trial, error and determination.

During that first university term Nang had been living with her older brother, an interior designer, in a rented older-style home in a small compound on Sukhumvit 53. Another resident of the compound was an art professor who was supporting a group of young men, art seniors at Chulalongkorn and Silpakorn Universities. Nang was most interested in seeing what they were engaged in doing, and was befriended by the group, which included Tawee. The young men likely had their egos stroked by the interest a young, attractive girl was showing in them and their artworks. When Tawee set Nang “homework tasks” and then declared she “had a very good hand”, the die was cast. In the second term of that year, Nang transferred to the art faculty at Rangsit College. She became such an accepted member of the university art clique that when she did eventually, and successfully, apply for one of the much-coveted places in Chulalongkorn’s Bachelor program, the lecturer was surprised she presented for interview, as he had believed her already enrolled. It was a moment of destiny which completely changed her life.

According to Nang, the intention of art is to provoke an emotional response in the viewer. For her, the creation of art comes directly from her heart and not her head. The act of creation is not work but a continual game. Nang is not an art teacher – she invites people to come to visit and play together with her, art and humanity being inseparable concepts. Art is fun and Nang is keen to share though she needs to pay attention lest she forget to eat, drink, exercise or even use the bathroom. Sheer fatigue sends Nang to her bed, nothing else.

Nang graduated from Chulalongkorn four years later, by then firmly partnered with Tawee, the couple continuing to live and create in Bangkok. Tawee has had a long love of painting landscapes so, at the invitation of a wealthy friend, he came on a three-week trip to capture the vistas of Hua Hin from the land his friend owned here. Nang couldn’t join Tawee as she was working in a gallery in Bangkok and running student workshops. Three weeks stretched to three months and Tawee was still not home, so Nang made the train trip south from Bangkok, more than 30 years ago now. It was her very first encounter with Hua Hin, a place now close to her heart as her son Krit’s birthplace. The pair fully relocated to Hua Hin about a year later, after Nang had two hospitalisations she attributes to the stress of their lengthy time apart. Tawee and his friend then established an art and craft centre on Naebkehardt Road.  

Nang finds much to recommend about living in Hua Hin. She likes its relative proximity to Bangkok’s lively art scene while it retains a small town feel despite having all the facilities and services she needs. Nang also likes Hua Hin’s royal connection and its broad international community which allows her to continue expanding her “family of the heart”. Nang’s ability to make, foster and grow interpersonal connections is likely her greatest personal strength. Nang does wish that Hua Hin beach had been preserved with better public access, like Cha-am beach, though.

Nang’s future is inextricably linked to Baan Silapin and she can’t imagine ever living anywhere else. In November 2025, Baan Silapin was again awarded, this time as a Model Healing & Wellness Tourism Entrepreneur by the Department of Tourism, Thailand. Nang will always remain a lynch-pin of the local art community.  Her watercolour portrait of King Rama IX is one of the highlights of her Nang’s career. She hadn’t painted for some time, but upon the King’s passing, that particular image of him brought Nang a great sense of calm and focus. The entire painting, with the exception of the King’s hair, which was completed the following evening, was expressed with watercolour onto paper in a six-hour-long session of creativity, love and much respect. The iconic image has been converted to 89 numbered prints, one for each year of the King’s life, which are still available to purchase, framed, at the Artist Village. Nang’s painting was transferred by Tawee onto a huge canvas which became the centrepiece of Market Village’s tribute to Thailand’s much-revered King.

Nang’s art is compulsive, ideas “bursting out like mushrooms”.  Her intricately painted Daimler limousine, destined for the Museo Auto Classica in Bluport Mall is a work Nang calls “my masterpiece”. Nang has participated in collective, duo and solo exhibitions dating back to 2011, local, national and international, the most recent being at the Galerie Keller in Paris from 12th – 22nd September 2025 where some of Nang’s most impressive and influential pieces went on public display. Nang’s dearest wish is that her greatest level of recognition as an artist happens during her lifetime so she is able to savour it. Posthumous renown will mean little. Nang would love to have her own museum to house a full life retrospective. Hopefully, what the heart can conceive, the body can achieve. 

Click through the image carousel to see some of Nang's iconic artworks.

Nang is  never far from her phone, the camera of which she uses to great effect. When a particular moment of inspiration strikes, Nang might document the entire creation process. This imagine carousel shows the birth of a black ink on paper line drawing.

Nang’s most recent works involve more subdued hues than many of her earlier pieces. Nang has embraced the use of natural and organic materials such as recycled paper, dyes of botanical origin and found stones, aware of the immense human footprint on our world. 

Nang feels her work entitled “The endless End”, made up of many joined rectangles of brown paper decorated with black ink and a few sparse touches of gold leaf, and completed over many years, is a representation of the interconnectedness of her life.

Some more of Nang's works are in this image carousel.

It is ironic that Nang’s surname, which she took from Tawee, translates as beautiful hair in English since it is one of her physical features that few will ever see. Nang almost always covers her head with one of her many headscarves, so few would appreciate her long tresses descend past her buttocks and she can’t remember when she last had a haircut. One last challenge in truly loving herself, which Nang acknowledges is a prerequisite to loving others fully, is to worry less about the shape of her head, which along with convenience, is the purpose of Nang’s iconic headwear. You are perfect just as you are Nang, a woman for whom time and boundaries have little relevance.