EAST-WEST CONTRAST

By Michael Croft

For many years in the UK it has not been necessary to sign one's paintings. Usually a name goes on the back of them - plus details of medium if conservation is a worry for the future.

Similarly, there are no grand openings of exhibitions, and the artist turns up late for the private view, dressed no differently from the average guest. Secretly of course, most people wish to be known for their work. It's all related to the ego. In Thailand, artists still seem to be rather more honest about this. Thai artists' biographies often look rather impressive at the back of very professional looking publicity. But Thailand doesn't seem to suffer the same cynicism of western countries that throws otherwise more instinctive drives into confusion.

One can't easily say any more: "Look at me! I've done this and I have a right to feel proud of it". But at the heart of this western diffidence is a fundamental truth: It's very difficult now to do anything that is innovative or really worth anything.

Acrylic, oil paint, sand, latex glue on canvas 87 x 142 cms

A sort of autobiography

My early introduction to art started at college in London in the 70s'. My degree college was rather traditional in its orientation. Fine Art Painting meant painting whereas most of the galleries were showing photographs and texts as fine art. This made me feel rather embarrassed to paint, and I tried to do other things. It wasn't until a spell at the Painting School of the Royal College of Art in the early 80s - three years painting full-time amongst students who had made a clear commitment to the medium - that painting really took hold of me. Coinciding with this was a resurgence of figurative painting In Europe. In retrospect I'm pleased that the 70s gave me some insight into other mediums. I have taught art for most of my life since then, and my general inclination at any level of art teaching I have been involved with is not to assume that any student of art will become a painter. I teach mainly 3D at the moment, which is building and making things, at Harrow International School in Bangkok. In a way, I get the students doing things I would like to be able to do myself - work where there is a clear relationship between idea, materials/process, and outcome. Painting for me is just not like that. Let's use the metaphor of transparency and opacity. Painting is an opaque medium. It's difficult to see clearly through it, to communicate in any obvious way through it and make obvious statements.

Between 30 and 40 years old - I'm now 46 - the drive to paint was replaced by the need to live more easily, more comfortably. This had an effect on my painting. If you visit the exhibition you will maybe see one painting that I really struggled with, as though a battle had taken place. If you can imagine it, I used to make sure that all of my paintings were like that. (The legacy of the angry young man?). But since I've been in Thailand, I've started to feel that if I don't feel relaxed about any painting, I should throw it away. Maybe it has taken the example of Thainess to start to teach me that lesson! Where does the motivation for something like painting come from? Before coming to Thailand to live I studied psychodynamic counselling for a year. The idea is that the unconscious is a very strong drive that affects our conscious lives, and it helps to be watchful of this often-devious power that shapes the way we think and behave. Language itself is thought to have multiple layers relating to the conscious and unconscious. Painting and other art forms are also thought by some people to have a language and work like language. I tend to believe this and am watchful and curious of less conscious levels of communication, expression or thought that may come through. These levels need not negate one another, and can be various avenues of speculation that may or may not be mutually informative. As far as I'm concerned, uncertainty rules okay! If you want to hear me on my real passion, get me onto the subject of song canaries. I'm not joking either.

An English artist living in Thailand - his work and what catches his eye.

Maybe yours too?

Michael Croft

Chiangmai and the North

My Chiangmai

David Hardy

The Drinks Page

Night Fowl

Letters

Heart to Heart

Reasons to Relax

Old and New along the River Ping.

Laos by Bridge

Hospitals losing money

Hospitals taking part in the government's new "30 B per visit" health scheme for poor Thai people are already losing money (...).

MISS JUREEPORN. I'm 30 years old and would like to marry with a foreign gentleman 30-45 years old who has a good heart (...).

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