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 utters his name Artist Aung Myint, certainly, the others will surely see his Mother & Child paintings at once. Both local collectors and international collectors know him with his Mother & Child paintings, with which he got Asian Award in 2002.
` Among Mother & Child paintings, the early woks were based on expressionism. When we talked about Mother & Child paintings with the artist, he said: ‘’In 1972, I started to paint Mother & Child. In the beginning, I relied on symbolism and abstract. Later, I relied on line. The first pieces of line-based works are the ones with which I got Asian Award. From then on, people came to know me more.”
And when I asked him about how he started to draw with one-line style, he replied in honest manner. “Mother & Child is mystical. It started when I was with my wife when she went to a fortuneteller. The fortuneteller gave me a mystic candle and told me to paint, seeing the image the candle made when it melt. Amazingly, I saw the images of mother and child. From then on, I no longer draw Mother & Child with the style of expression and started to make one-line drawing paintings. Fortunately, I got Asean Award with those paintings. The result is that I became more popular.”
When we make art, we try to depict our trauma. Do we? I thought that it might be there, in his memory, something about his mother live on, and I happened to ask him and he narrated:
“Yeah, my mother always live on in my memory. My mother died when I was too young. I always remember my mother. I want to depict mother love, thinking about my mother. I want to honor mothers. My early paintings might be influenced by the image of mother and child. Even before making these pieces of Mother & Child, I had already made the other pieces of Mother & Child.’’
Artist Aung Myint have already created thousands of Mother & Child paintings, and collectors of the world have already have those pieces.
Though he has already created many works Mother & Child, his works differ from each other. Each piece is unique, which shows how he loves his mother,
I think that art lover may guess.
