Sompol Yarangsee

Sompol Yarangsee paints idealized landscapes dominated by flowers. Pastoral and touched by a sense of the surreal, Sompol’s paintings suggest landscapes as they can be imagined rather than experienced. Natural colors are heightened, contrasts are sharp, and the vistas are extraordinarily harmonized.

Songpol presents partial views. Flowers enter his compositions from the edges of the canvas and horizons roll and disappear into infinity. Nature, Sompol understands, resists being captured by our vision; it is always greater than us. However, the artist’s sense of the epic is tempered by the intimacy with which he renders details of the landscape. This relation between detail and ever-expanding views, is a perfect description of our experience of nature. However, it is the more imaginative aspects of Sompol’s works that compel attention.

His flowers have near-human qualities as they bend and twist, or seductively invite us to touch because of their wonderful colors. Here Sompol manages to transcend, if not challenge, the traditions he otherwise references, from Romanticism to Impressionism. But like many of his contemporaries in Chiang Rai, the crux of his art is in the grandeur and beauty of the northern Thailand landscape; a grandeur and beauty that demands the artist’s repeated attention.