Princess of Anxiety by Ratch Osathanugrah

Ratch Osathanugrah paints about his mother. She appears across the work in changing forms - a girl on a boat, a queen, a fish that doesn't swim well, and the houses around her are unstable: pink, upside down, on fire. Worm-like lines move through the skies, the walls, and her face, which represent the anxiety and pressure that surrounded her.

The colour is loud. The subject is not.
The essence of these paintings resides within that very gap.

The work belongs loosely to a tradition of expressive figuration, where colour carries the feeling and the figure bends to fit the emotion. Ratch names Chagall and Van Gogh among the painters he loves, and something of both is present: the dream-logic of one, the intensity of emotion pushed through colour in the other.

He works in oil, on canvas, without preparatory sketches. He begins with a single object — a girl, a tree, a house — and adds the next once he can see where it belongs. Colour comes late.
He considers a painting finished when he steps back and it looks finished, though he often returns months later and finds something else it needs.

Ratch is self-taught. He drew since he was very young, studied art at school, then set it aside for the decades of a career in business. He returned to painting during the pandemic, working alone, and has painted steadily since.

Seen together, the paintings form a profound tribute to his mother's life - her anxiety, her endurance — and a record of the artist's attempt to set that life down in colour.