Artist : Mitree Parahom

The dance of life : William Marazzi on the art of Mitree Parahom
........................................................................................................................................................

"Art is not nature. On the contrary, ail and civilisation are derive from nature. Different people have different attitudes and beliefs towards creation.... A diversity of natural conditions brings about varying phenomena that mingle with the lifestyle of a society.... They search for knowledge in order to insure their survival. Their artistic achievements are rooted in nature and wrought in beliefs that serve and guide the community's existence. By understanding beauty, they enhance peace and integhty in their midst. My paintings are stories of life screened through my imagination. They are a cordial tribute to my emotional link to nature. " - Mitree Parahom.

Mitree Parahom. is thirty-one years old. He was born on a farm in Si Saket, in Tliailand's Northeast. As a child, he remember the noise of bombs exploding across the border in Cambodia. That was during the Khmer Rouge conflict. The nearby was coul not have any impact on his vision of the future. Instead it was his early exposure to a peaceful and productive life on the family farm that has shaped his personal uiniverse. That world has grown to encompass both his artistic focus and materialistic aim. Nowadays the farm is self sufficient and steadily growing due to his siblings and himself investing part of their earnings in expanding and modernising the property.

Mitree's parents raised no objection to his chosen career in art. He studied at Ubon Rachatani College for three years, and then painting at Chulalongkorn University for another four. His original association with art seems to have been confined to the Murals and carvings that he saw in local temples, and to watching his mother weave on the loom at home. He wears starts cut from cloth woven by her. While at university in Bangkok, he recalls that the programme was not that strict. He was left with many opportunities to get acquainted with the capital's art scene.

Mitree differs a lot from a number of his peers. He is not into conceptual art and performance. He does not serenade his audience with pselido-intellectual installations. He is just mildly social-conscious, and has no axe to grind in the domain of politics and ecology. He paints what he knows best: the farm. At one point fie veered off and painted the city, not for long though because he quickly became dissatisfied with the topic. He realisect that he was no longer working from his happiness but from a place of stress that did not suit his emotional make-up.

His biography reveals a man wl-io is hard at work. He has had eight solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows in Thailand, Denmark and Australia. He likes to pictorially celebrate Thailand's traditional rural life and make it known overseas. "The farmers are the backbone of this country," he adds.

Two years ago at the Akko Galleries on Sukhumvit Road, Mitree presented a collection of thirty canvases entitled the Dance of Life. "The worts portrayed rural wisdom and simplicity," he explains, "A return to nature expressed through a harmonious lifestyle. By not segregating humanity from the souls of other creatures, my works depicted a holistic outlook on the correlation between nature and truth, like the total picture of Thai society in time past.