Out of gloom, some welcome cheer

THE GIRL portrayed on the bags, T-shirts and postcards sold at last month’s Baan Lae Suan fair at Bitec in Bang Na was the picture of cheerfulness – round face, round eyes and curly eyelashes. The funny thing is that this beaming young lady somehow emerged out of the artist’s feelings of stress and pessimism.

Pakinee Rattana wasn’t doing too well amid the 1997-98 financial crisis. She’d quit her job as a copywriter to go into business on her own, producing soft toys and accessories with amusing design that she sold under the brand name Idealist. People wanted cheering up at the time and her business did very well, with 90 per cent of her orders coming from Europe. But then the economy hit another freeze in 2011 and the orders slowed to a trickle. For Pakinee too, the stress piled up.

To climb back out of the gloom, she turned to the skills she’d acquired studying decorative arts at Silpakorn University and grabbed her paintbrush. She created that picture of the little girl brimming with easy-going optimism and posted her work on her Facebook page, “Kingtun”, along with stories and musings that reflected her shifting moods.

“I’m not an optimist at heart, but when I paint I forget all the bad things,” says Pakinee, whose Facebook page soon had more than 8,000 followers. 

“At the time I’d just lost my mum and my beloved cat, and I was always thinking about death. So I started to draw every day to improve my concentration. I didn’t graduate in fine arts, so I just use the simplest forms in my work. The young girl and her canine and feline companions are the main characters. She and I share only one thing in similar – thick, curly eyelashes.”

The smiling cartoonish girl that emerged from Pakinee’s depression earned immediate positive feedback and her friends urged her to have an exhibition. And that’s what happened 

 last year – the solo exhibition titled “I’m a Painter”, split between the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre and the Marsi Gallery at Suan Pakkad Palace. The paintings appear to have been almost casually rendered, but the lines are precious and neat. She prefers to omit the details and rely solely on the outlines.

“I always dreamed of having an exhibition of my art before I died and I was lucky enough to have two in the same year!” Pakinee says. “Half my pieces 

 shown at the Art and Culture Centre sold out very quickly. Everyone loved this cheerful girl, saying she embodied joy and happiness.”

The acclaim convinced her to start a new venture, a brand named after the exhibition, with the same paintings transferred onto T-shirts, bags and postcards.

“I was feeling really depressed after hearing the news about the car bombing 

 in Hat Yai in April,” Pakinee says. “I painted several sombre pieces that reflected my sorrowful feelings and posted them on the social media, but few people liked them. People want something joyful instead to help them cope with the difficulties they were facing in their own lives. So I just changed my way of thinking, exchanging anger and sadness for joy and happiness.”

 

HERE COMES THE SUN

You can buy the items from I’m a Painter at Store 161 in Project 3 on Soi 44/1 at the Chatuchak Weekend Market, and some of them are available through www.IdealistThailand.com.

Find out more at (02) 936 6422 or the “Kingtun” page on Facebook.