On that day after the interview I decided that I must do a piece exclusively on Roongroj in the near future for I was impressed by his work.
The opportunity come two months later when I heard that he was scheduled to present solo, his installation of fifty Buddha canvases at Chulalongkorn Apt gallery.
I already knew that he had spent two years getting the installation ready.
He had said that the Buddha's life story is long and ninety-nine canvases might have done justice to the scope of the lord's odyssey,
but he had to stop at fifty-five because he ran out of money and his wife was ill. He had to support his family and took on odd jobs.

Roongroj does an art that harks back in spirit and looks to the cave temple painting, created mostly by monks in various parts of Asia where Buddhism flourished :
India, Sri Lanka, China, etc. He does not copy the style of any school of those past eras. Yet upon close scrutiny,
his Buddha portraits seem to bear some resemblance to Thailand's Sukhothai and Chiangsen styles.
He indicates that it is pure coincidence. He reiterates that the elegant and serene faces of the Master that make up the sole subject of his installation are porely his own.
The drafting and colouring of the faces are exquisite and drew my attention. The line drawing perfect. the overall skin tones
vary from patinaed amber to eggshell. Each Buddha head painting is accompanied with one or more abstractions.
These are heavily textured with a concoction of gesso and paints, a mixture that he does not want to reveal. Some abstractoils are in burnished gold dominants, earth tone,
and deep greens. Their juxta-position reproduces the feeling one gets on location while viewing ancient Buddhist dry frescoes.
But what I find even more amazing is that he is capable of instilling in his works the spirituality that makes past devotional arts so special and unique.

In contrast to historical Buddhist art, contemporary Buddhist art usually lacks that hard-to-describe quality that moves the heart.
That same lack of depth, I tend to find in contemporary religious art worldwide, and I keep wondering why.

For example when I visit the wats in Petchburi town, the monastic buildings and the wall paintings (minus restorations) exude that particular essence of mind.
Such elevated grace is missing in the newly built sanctuaries that I chanced upon while travelling around Thailand.
I shall draw a comparison with Western arts. For all the praises that historians and museum curators shower on some 20th century master artists: Picasso, Matisse, Moore,
Lecorbusier, let's face it, these artists cannot compare wide the likes of Da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Some critics say that European painting lacks substance as early as in the 18th century; I won't be the judge of that.
I just know that from having witnessed a great deal of art in many parts of the globe, that much of the contemporary art that is good is profane versus sacred, and reflects personal and social friction.
But then there arc always exceptions where the mundane draws on the humane and spiritual, such as in Diego Rivera's painting of two Mexican boys : 'The Sons of Compadre', 1930.

I met with Roongroj before the opening. The fifty canvases were already up on the walls, arranged all around the gallery in a single file.
Facing the gallery door, were the two largest and newest canvases of the series.
They were over two-metres tall, impressive and consisted of an eggshell-colour Buddha head with a long ushnisha, sided with a golden-earth-toned abstract panel.
The draftsmanship of the face was particularly wonderful. Serenity filled the room.

Roongroj mentioned that tile installation minus the two larger panels had just been purchased by a Singaporean who had seen the works in Chiang Mai.
And I sensed the twin panels would he soon acquired as well because of their high artistic merit.

About himself, he dresses in ethnic clothes made by his wife, and wears sandals. He sports a long pony tail and a moustache.
Would I not know him, with his unusual attire and peaceful countenance I would think that he takes after the Chinese literati of olden days who spent their days wandering the wild mountains,
meditating among the pine covered rocks shrouded in mist, writing verses in the wind, all the while searching for the elixir of immortality.
But upon my asking about his ancestry, he declared that he is not of Chinese descent, his forebears belonged to a small group of Tai who migrated to the north of Thailand long ago and whose roots are in Sip Song Pan Na, in Southern China.
He was born outside of Chiang Mai, his father was a photographer and ran a Shop. He still lives in his parents' house, without them by now.
His wife and two daughters stay at her familial house in another village 35 kilometres away.
They get together on weekends. Such living arrangement allows him to fully concen trate on painting.

He graduated in printmaking from Silapakorn University in 1987. Thereafter he returned to the north and dedicated his time to studying Lanna murals, and crafts created by the artisans at Tawai village near Chiang Mai.
He adds that Crafts of Bantawai are mostly Burmese, surely a leftover from the two-hundred-year-long Burmese suzerainty over the north of Thailand.
Chiang Mai fell to the Burmese in 1558. Bantawai has become a commercial crafts centre.

Roongroj is Intent on the Buddhist theme for he has gone through many painful trials, and twice was on the verge of losing his life.
These ordeals left him with a direct insight into at least two Buddhist tenets : the truth of impermanence and suffering.
This realisation of spiritual nature finds its way in his paintings, and got him to grasp the core of his subject matter.
He is not delivering a message of salvation to the public, but rather offers inspiration to anyone who might he ready to see the rules that govern human life as he does and who are sensitive to
beauty of a higher order. To me at least, his pictorial renditions of inner peace and wholesome psychological state act as a temporary haven in a world rocked by injustice.

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By William Marazzi
Expression, Art, December, January 2001