Bougainvillea Print

Praweena Bunker was born in 1982 in Bangkok, Thailand. At the age of thirteen after seeing photos of impressionist paintings in art class she decided to become a painter. She attended a vocational college to begin a fine arts program, learning to draw, and paint with water colors, and make use of woodcut and sculpture techniques for the first time. After three years of studying basic skills, Praweena went to Chiang Mai University to their fine art faculty choosing painting as her major and her minor was sculpture. She experimented with several styles of painting and was told to put more recognizable things into her painting to gain recognition. But what she wanted most was to paint and paint well. After graduating she decided to study more and find her own way to paint. For her, painting is all about creating beautiful, interesting images and that is what she intends to do. In 2013, Praweena took an extended trip to Paris and Amsterdam to visit many museums and parks, and having seen the original paintings of many of her favorite artists she was able to improve her painting skills. Returning to Thailand she lives and paints primarily with oils and on occasion with other mediums including poster colors in her Chiang Mai home. Praweena works from the photographs she took there as well as from her memory of the Paris parks in particular and she increased the color intensity of her painting to enhance her feelings of the original scenes. She believes that anything she sees, such as landscapes, people, animals or objects, can become the subject matter for painting by giving them her own interpretation.