BLUE MOOD

Artist’s text:
“This painting was painted because it relates to my own story from my childhood.
When I was a kid, I was just a young cowboy in a rural area. At the time, every morning I went to school and in the afternoon, after lunch, I had to take care of the cows in the fields until 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. before returning home.
But every day when I went to school, I passed by to see the graffiti on the wall of a monastery next to my primary school. They are the ones who made me want to learn painting to one day become a famous painter.. But there was nowhere to learn to paint. In 2000, I left the Kampot region to live in Siem Reap to continue my studies. In 2008 I graduated from high school and was really hoping to study painting at art school, but my mother couldn't afford to send me to study in Phnom Penh, the capital city.
I was very disappointed not to be able to achieve my goal of studying at art school: I had to resolve to continue learning on my own, as I have done since a young age, since When I was just a cowboy.
In many of my paintings, I use the symbols of the cow from my childhood and the Lotus, a symbol of purity and rebirth among Buddhists, which refers to the cowboy who tries to get by like the lotus plant which grows slowly but with determination, straight under the mud to the surface of the water, to offer beautiful flowers for everyone to see. »