Thai painter Kwanruethai Panprom is a welcoming host, inviting us all to visit her home, her mind. Come in, she implores, take a look around. Of course, things here are not very straightforward. Her inner thoughts—all our inner lives—are not made of wood and glass; they’re made of memories, emotions, and neurons. We forget some things, fixate on others, and outright imagine more. It’s all colored by our feelings, and sometimes those feelings take front and center. A memory of something as simple as a table or a song can make us see red.
Panprom’s paintings are a mix of bold and solid colors, angsty scratches, impressionistic renderings of household items, and realistic imagery. It’s all very surreal, because what’s a more accurate style to represent the mind? When we think, we don’t see ultra-high definition images in our head (unless you have a photographic memory), but rather a mix of things drifting in and out of focus, colored by what they mean to us personally. And so staircases float over an expanse of red void, doorways to nowhere rest on a transfixing yellow blankness, and a stove emits bursting flames in front of a cozy, flammable chair.
Looking at Panprom’s work, it’s obvious that there’s meaning applied to many of her recurring themes and stylistic choices, but what exactly they represent is not readily clear. She says that her early work was an attempt to convey direct feelings and memories but that she withdrew from that idea and chose something more enigmatic. Now she prefers vignettes of thoughts and emotions that are more fleeting but command an investigation by the viewer.
It’s a very domestic space that Panprom has created. As otherworldly and strange as it feels, everything floats around a home full of familiar items and rooms. Childhood wall paintings blend with angry scribbles, comforting furniture floats in the eternity of the id, and hypnotically colored walls hide everyday objects from full sight. There are elements of anger and fear, love and warmth, and anxiety and confusion; often all within one piece.
It’s an intuitive form of painting, one that taps into Panprom’s subconscious and doesn’t rely strictly on reason. Sometimes she feels confused and that becomes a part of her work. If she’s reflecting on something from her life but comes to no conclusions about it, that’s also applied to her painting. And it’s certainly something many of us can relate to as well. The lives we lead are very rarely neatly wrapped up like a well-written story. They’re full of plot holes, unfinished digressions, and nonsensical interruptions. Reality is weirder than fiction, and her work captures this fact neatly.
