Thai artist Natee Utarit weaves messages into his paintings

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DEEP in their hearts, many people want their life to end up like a fairy tale and live happily ever after.

With this utopian thought as inspiration, Thai artist Natee Utarit created the works in his collection ‘Tales of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’.

Using characters from fairy tales, Natee painted a colossal 240cm by 200cm work of the same title as the central piece to tell his story while the smaller pieces branch out to tell stories of their own.

Happy ending: Natee standing next to his favourite work, ‘The End’, which shows the back of a couple, painted in brown hues like the chocolate figurines on wedding cakes.

“This collection is about fairy tales, which are sometimes what daily life is about. In Thailand, you can see many advertisements for fair skin treatments. Every woman wants to be Snow White,” Natee said with a laugh.

Currently residing in Bangkok, the 39-year-old artist was in Kuala Lumpur for the opening of his solo exhibition at the Richard Koh Fine Art gallery in Bangsar Village II.

Natee is no stranger to the Malaysian art scene as he has had several solo and joint exhibitions in Kuala Lumpur within the last few years.

At first glance, his works seem simple but a closer inspection reveals great detail in his strokes, creating intrinsic shadows and texture of the characters.

Likewise, his works are not as simple as they seem, as he weaves political messages into the paintings.

“I was into conceptual painting from 1999. In 2006, I moved on to do something political because I saw many changes in my country,” he said.

Political message: Natee uses fairy tale characters to express political meanings, like this piece ‘The Prince’, which has a black-andwhite picture of the Thai flag in the background.

He chose to express his thoughts on politics on canvas as it was not easy to talk openly about politics in Thailand.

However, Natee admitted to self-censoring so as not to offend people with his works.

“I don’t want to be too expressive because I want people to see my work,” he said.

His works will be on display until Nov 6 at the Richard Koh Fine Art gallery located at Lot 2F-3, Level 2, Bangsar Village II, Jalan Telawi 1, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur.