Sweet Surreality

MANTA KLANGBOONKRONG explores the mind of pop surrealist ATCHALINEE “AIM” KESORNSOOK, learning how she found her way back to art after a years-long soul-searching detour.

WHEN YOU FIRST look at an oil painting by Atchalinee “Aim” Kesornsook, it’s hard not to be captivated by the cute doll-like faces and the soft, sweet colour palette she uses to depict her characters. In one piece, called Alice, a tranquil scene depicts a blond-haired, doe-eyed girl standing in a field full of kittens with butterflies fluttering in the air. In another, Mina, a girl is enveloped by thin branches and surrounded by white flowers, a bunny and butterflies. However, if you step a little closer to appreciate the details, you’ll find more macabre, grim elements that provoke deeper thoughts about the relationship between pleasure and pain in our lives.

At 38 years old, Aim only made her public art debut early last month in “Plus Four”, a joint exhibition with three other artists at Duke at Gaysorn, but her journey in the world of art started when she was a little girl – against her parent’s approval.

“Like most parents, they wanted to see their children get ‘real’ jobs with financial security, and unfortunately being an artist wasn’t one of them,” Aim says. “But I knew I had a gift in art.”

After attending high school in the UK, Aim went on to study engineering in the United States to please her parents. She excelled in all her subjects, but the yearning for artistic expression was too difficult to ignore.

“I try hard at everything all the time, even with things that I don’t really like,” she says. “But my heart was not there. I felt empty.”