Thai Painter Shop, Surat Thani Live Cam

A portrait painter works at an easel in a shop on Ko Pha Ngan, in the Gulf of Thailand, in front of this camera. Finished canvases stand along the wall.

The work is copying: a photograph is squared up and painted in oils at whatever size the customer wants, usually over a few days. Thailand has a large trade in hand-painted copies, most of it concentrated in a few towns and worked by painters trained in exactly this way.

The shop is on a commercial street inland from the ferry pier, and the camera has been left running through the whole process, which is the reason people watch it.