ABOUT THE PAINTINGS OF SOMYOT

If you keep your eyes wide open, in nearly every moment you will find visual structures which can be formed into artwork. But then the work begins... A painting may be just the transformation of such visual inspiration into an autonomous thing - a piece of art.

Somyot Hananuntasuk gets the inspiration for his mostly colourfull paintings by structures found in other medias, e.g. splendid Japanese textiles but also such simple things like old and damaged walls or grounds. A broken asphalt road surface can give a visual impulse, but not the road will be the motive of the later painting: it s the idea of irregular lines, fit to plain fields, that makes the final motive. The drawing of lines becomes one part of a painting, made in solid oil technique. Colour is the other part. Both have a dynamic, very individual structure, showing the process of painting. The colour is brought onto the painting by palette knifes very often, giving an effect of a real object in front of you. Colour is important

for the creation of atmosphere. Every painting should create its own atmosphere, should evoke certain feelings in its spectators.

After the first impulse was found, a phase of composition leads the artist to the result. There are strict orders, but they have to struggle with what happens by accident during the process of painting. One thing is experience, the result of a long time of very concentrated work with visual structures. Afeeling for balance of forms, harmony or contrast of colours is essential. Another thing is the search for really convincing results. Somyot has to control step by step what happens on the canvas (or paper). He has to decide if something not being planed will fit or not. There are a lot of possibilities, and sometimes a painting has to be given up, when the process came to a dead end.

If the work succeeds, the result is a dialogue. Not only a dialogue with us, the spectators, being involved with our personal feelings by the visual atmosphere. But - and this seems to be major - a dialogue inside the picture. For an abstract work it is most important to create such a kind of communication between its parts. The search of

the artist described before means also to listen, to look what the possibilities of this dialogue are. Every picture forms its space. Every line, every field, every colour is a personality in this space. Here is the chatroom, cut out of a never-ending visual structure. Like snapshots of microscopic views the paintings seem to be witnesses of eternal activities, which fill not only space but also time.

The paintings are inventions of the artist, but they live their own life. We have the possibility to take part: being inspired ourself by the atmosphere, in which Somyot s work gets its remarkable results.

Jochen Meister

 

Publication : Catalogue
Publication : Catalogue