Aung Myint
Aung Myint, one of the leaders who participated in the modern art movement of Myanmar Contemporary Art, recognized for his versatility in paintings, installation and performance art has a broad range of unique styles. His life as an artist has been part of the history of Myanmar's modern art and started painting impressionistic still life paintings in 1970. Aung Myint painted in various styles such as Impressionism, Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. His notable pieces, "Egoist" installation and "Life" performance art were showcased in 1996. He usually used white, black and red colour palette while painting. In 2000, he stick to use only black and white colors to draw single-line outline paintings that combined Myanmar's traditional friendly abstraction with the shape of a mother and child. These paintings are his true personal style, free from western modernism. He also created his "Mother and Child" artworks with wood, mud porcelain sculptures and sand sculptures. Throughout his career, Aung Myint's unique artistic philosophy and creative evolution have besome key features of his work.
When someone mentions the name of artist Aung Myint, people will certainly associate him with his Mother & Child paintings. Both local and international collectors recognize him for this series, which earned him the Asian Award in 2002.
In addition to the Mother & Child paintings, his early works were based on expressionism. When we discussed the Mother & Child paintings with the artist, he said: “In 1972, I started to paint Mother & Child. In the beginning, I relied on symbolism and abstraction. Later, I relied on lines. The first pieces of line-based works are the ones with which I won the Asian Award. From then on, people began to know me more.”
Regarding how he began using a one-line style, he explained: “Mother & Child is mystical. It started when I was with my wife and she went to a fortuneteller. The fortuneteller gave me a mystic candle and told me to paint, observing the images made by the candle as it melted. Amazingly, I saw images of a mother and child. From then on, I no longer painted Mother & Child in an expressionist style and started creating one-line drawings. Fortunately, I won the ASEAN Award with those paintings. The result was that I became more popular.”
When we create art, we often try to depict our trauma. Do we? I thought there might be something about his mother’s memory, so I asked him, and he shared: “Yeah, my mother always lives on in my memory. She passed away when I was too young. I always remember her. I want to depict a mother’s love, thinking about my own mother. I want to honor all mothers. My early paintings might have been influenced by the image of mother and child. Even before creating these Mother & Child pieces, I had already painted other Mother & Child works.”
Artist Aung Myint has created thousands of Mother & Child paintings, which are now owned by collectors all around the world.
