The artist
Manasi Bhatkande
Known as Sayo — short for Sayoni, a lover, a soulmate.
Sayo reconnected with art after leaving architecture school — a turning toward something slower, quieter, more her own. She chose watercolour deliberately: for its minimal environmental footprint, and for the meditative quality of working with water, pigment, and patience.
She paints the native flora of every region she travels to — a botanical record of place. A wild impatiens from the Bir valley. A coffee blossom from the hills of Chikmagalur. Each painting is as much about the where as the what.
Today she lives a sattvik life in the foothills of the Himalayas, painting the wildflowers at her doorstep and leading others, slowly, into the same practice.
She named herself Sayo — short for Sayoni, meaning a lover, a soulmate. It's the relationship she hopes people will come to have with the natural world: attentive, unhurried, in love with small things.
Collaborations
In good company.
"I paint slowly because nature moves slowly. Watercolour taught me that."Sayo
Find her on Instagram
@sayonisiThis is where the work really lives — process videos, half-finished botanicals, and the wildflowers she meets along the way. Come paint slowly, together.