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Piya |
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Remote as it is, Umphang Withayakhom is one of the most beautiful schools in Thailand…thanks in part to the talents of Piya Nateelitirong whose artistic life began with a BOOM! that nearly caused his death.
Thankful
for having been hit by a bomb!
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At least that’s the way Piya feels about it ten years after the fact. Lifting his shirt to reveal a huge scar that begins at the level of his heart and disappears into his pants, he says that maybe it was God’s way to get him started on his artistic career. |
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Piya Nateelitirong grew up in Baan Gloh Toh, a Karen village of bamboo homes with no electricity in one of the most remote regions of Thailand. His district, Umphang, is noted mainly for its pristine waterfalls, primal forests, treacherous mountain roads and perilous proximity to the Myanmar border where Karen people have been fighting a defensive war against the Burmese army for more than fifty years.
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Like a lot of kids the world over, Piya remembers spending a lot of his time in elementary school drawing cartoons instead of listening to the teacher. But he didn’t concentrate on his drawing much until, at the age of ten, he was hit by a stray bomb.
It took more than three years for him to recover. Unable to help work in the family’s rice field or play sports with the other kids, and encouraged by his father, Piya spent his time drawing. He developed an innocent style of depicting his surroundings. |
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Piya is now 19 years old and a senior at Umphang Withayakhom, the only high school in thousands of square miles of forested mountains. He has yet to take his first art class, but the campus of his high school is adorned with half a dozen of his murals showing the natural beauty of the region. One of his colored pencil drawings of the village graces the 2004 Calendar of The Indigenous Global Art Exchange. (www.iearn.org.au ) This year he won first prize in an art competition that pitted him against more advantaged students from the cities of northern Thailand. Unlike his earlier drawings, this entry shows nothing of the local scenery. Instead, it envisions a high-tech future in a complex composition.
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Piya continues to experiment and develop his art, especially after his first visit to an art museum and art galleries. An opportunity he enjoyed after receiving a scholarship to visit New Zealand for a month. He noticed that the artwork was very different from what he had been doing…trying to portray the world around him as realistically as possible. The experience liberated him. “Now I like to do watercolors. I feel free”, he says as he shows a semi-abstract watercolor with a Christ figure pulled from the background like a colorful Rorschach print.
In the short run, his first goal is to pass the university entrance exam and get a scholarship to study art at Chiang Mai University. His fallback plan is to become an English teacher and do his artwork in his free time. But Piya’s real dream is to create one painting so wonderful that it will be known by people all around the globe.
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Piya's email is:
see_piya@hotmail.comFor more information about Umphang Withayakhom:
English
Thai
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