Fairy tales and mythology, traditional art and cartoons, popular culture and religion. The paintings of Bhoobadee Yuthim blend all these elements, drawing on Thai mural art with centuries of history and flipping it with bright colors, queer references, and a devotion to familiar faces. Picture Ariel perched on a rock, long-nailed fingers pinched in a mudra formation, the scales of her fin matching the kranok patterns in her jewelry. To emphasize his identity as a gay man, he gives her a five o’clock shadow and broad shoulders.

Yuthim has been passionate about traditional Thai art since childhood since he was raised as a Buddhist. And like most kids, he also grew up on movies and cartoons. When he started to take art seriously, he combined these two creative interests. By bringing new colors, topics, and a sense of fun to temple mural styles, he hopes to keep these forms relevant by making them more accessible to modern viewers in Thailand while also bringing them to people with different religious outlooks and from other parts of the world.

The feminine quality of Yuthim’s work is both a way to make it more fun and also to highlight that he is a gay artist. One issue he has with traditional Thai art is that it rarely portrays the diversity of sexual identities, since it’s influenced by religious beliefs that consider same-sex love as sinful. So he aims to make it more inclusive by making this a central theme. In the future, he hopes to express this with more masculine themes to add a new dimension to his style.