THE ILLUSTRATOR WHOSE WORKS WERE INSPIRED BY THE COLOR FROM HIS MOTHER’S TAILOR

TEXT & IMAGE COURTESY OF OLE

(For Thai, press here)

WHO

I’m Anusorn Phasomkit, an illustrator, born and raised in Chonburi, Thailand. My mother is a dressmaker who runs her own shop.

WHAT

I’ve done all kinds of work, and most of them were things I’d wanted to do. I was a full-time office worker at a multi-media company, a photographer, a graphic designer, a creative, a second-hand shop owner, running a café, and working as a barista. But nothing fulfills and satisfies me the way being an illustrator does.

WHEN

I started working solely as an illustrator in 2019, and it’s the only thing I want to keep doing for the rest of my life.

WHERE

I’m currently living and working in Bangkok. But I can’t stand the crazily tangled-up cable lines and architecture in Bangkok. I hate how billboards and commercial signs are everywhere, as if they were walls of people’s homes. I’ve been trying to find a new place to live—somewhere that would be better for my career as an illustrator—but I haven’t found one yet.

WHY

I think illustration is fun. It’s conveying a certain message you receive through visuals. Each work has its own individual character, and I have fun in every step of the process, from imagining the concept,  sketching, drawing and coloring, and being able to see the final result. The more it’s been published and reached a wider group of people, the more excited I get. It’s like my contribution is being valued and appreciated through this thing that I create. And when I start a new project, there’s not a single aspect of the job that I don’t want to do.

How would you describe your work?

I don’t think my work has a specific style, but I have had a great deal of influence from my childhood experiences being inside my mother’s shop. I’ve always liked floral patterns on fabrics and the vibrant colors of the spools of thread my mother kept. That is why OLE’s illustrations are quite feminine, with vivid, bold colors and surreal, two-dimensional shapes. These are the characteristics of OLE’s work.

If you ask about the current style of my work, I think it’s a colorful spot in the darkness. We’ve just recovered from COVID-19, and the time before now was very gloomy and somber. Of course, I was affected by that period of time, so the works I’ve been working on recently tell stories with a dark background, from things that seem despairing. But like I said, I’m the bright, colorful spot in the dark. What the story behind each of my works ends up conveying is that in the darkness, there’s that speck of light and color that holds hope and comfort. So my works have combined elements of black and bright colors.

What is your inspiration and guiding principle for each creation?

When it comes to the inspirations behind my work, there are several elements involved. Money is one of them. It may sound cruel, but that’s reality. With money, you have more opportunities. It allows you to find so many things that will become the raw materials for your work—things that you can use to tell stories in so many different ways. But another significant element that has always been a great deal of inspiration to me is being able to meet the people who like my work and know that my illustrations are able to fulfill them emotionally and creatively.

There was this one time when someone came up to me and told me about the pain he was experiencing  from losing a child and a pet at a relatively close time, and he happened to see my work. He told me that my work somehow helped heal him from the grief and loss. It made me think that good inspiration should come from both myself and the people who see my work; even just one person would be enough.

What project are you most proud of?

It’s actually the current project I’m working on. It isn’t done yet, but I’m very proud of it. It’s a project where I train myself to finish drawing something within ten minutes. The creation process is impulsive, with nothing planned in advance, just spending those ten minutes drawing. Some of the works look weird, others are unfinished, and some are simply messed up. But I don’t mind them being messed up. I get to create these little things, these small accomplishments, every day. When that 1,000-second mark passes, I discover that these small things I’ve created are actually so great in scale and number and so much more powerful than what I first imagined. I still don’t know where this project will end, but I’m very proud of it.

Which stage of the design process do you like the most?

When I’m done drawing a work, I like to look at it for a while and sort of savor it. It always makes me feel good—that feeling of knowing that I’m the one who created that piece of work.

If you could invite a ‘creative’ to coffee, who would you invite and why?

Pen-ek Ratanaruang, the filmmaker. I’ve been watching a lot of his interviews. I really like his film, Monrak Transistor. I love the music he chose for the film and how the poster tricked viewers into believing that it’s going to be this romantic movie but ends up cruelly surprising viewers with the love story of struggling individuals. I just want to be able to be that kind of storyteller, to be able to visualize and depict my imagination in such an interesting way. A movie with such a sad story makes me so damn happy whenever I see it.

Like I said, I’ve been kind of into stories with dark backgrounds, and I’m this bright, colorful speck in the dark—a self-inflicted flame like a firework in the sky. So, yeah, a ten-minute conversation with him while having a cup of coffee together would be nice.

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