Thai Artists | Panya Vijinthanasarn

Panya Vijinthanasarn, formerly Dean of the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts of Silapakorn University in Bangkok, is presently a lecturer in the Thai Art Department, Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts of Silapakorn University. He studied in 1982 at the UCL, Slade School of Fine Art on a British Council scholarship. Panya has shown internationally in galleries and museums in many countries and widely in Thailand. From 1985 -1987, Panya led a team to decorate the Buddha Padipa Temple in Wimbledon, London, with neo-traditional murals that dealt with the conventional subjects of the Three Worlds. During 1995-1996 he was commissioned by the Siam Commercial Bank to paint murals for the new Head Office and he also collaborated in illustrating His Majesty The King of Thailand's book, Mahajanaka. Panya's paintings revisit and reinvigorate traditional Thai and often Buddhist iconography with a continual reference to today's world and life force. His paintings are often monumental in scale and contrast a dominant image with small details.