La Inthonkaew
La was born in a small village bordering the jungle in central Thailand in 1980 or 1981. She is Thai, but some of her ancestors also came from Burma, Laos and China. Her father was a local shaman; her uncle was a locally venerated Buddhist monk famous for his miraculous powers; the women in her family were traditionally midwives.
She went to school for only four years, commuting from the family farm to the center of the village on the back of her favorite water buffalo - and almost always escaped before the end of her classes by jumping out of a classroom window, because she was bored. After the premature death of her father, the family disintegrated and, at the age of eleven, La found herself alone with two small brothers to take care of. She had to become a hunter and gatherer in order to survive for the next two years.
Later, La went through a number of menial jobs working e.g. as a construction laborer, cook, cleaning lady, masseuse and a beach parasol lender.
A mother of three, La gave birth to her first child when she was fifteen, and at the age of 33 she was already the grandmother of twins. While visiting with her family in Phuket in 2004, she was swept up by the tsunami, which
came close to killing her. At the same time, however, this traumatic experience fully opened the doors of her pictorial imagination.
La started painting at a very early age while she was still living in the Thai countryside, painting on any scrap of paper that she could lay her hands on with paints that she herself prepared using mud and flowers.
She has never received any artistic education and has never been interested in art. However, in 2010, she started painting with oils that she found in the studio of her new boyfriend - and this was her favorite medium of expression until 2019 when La’s focus shifted to drawing.
La paints with an obsession that sometimes produces several paintings in one day. In addition to people, La enjoys painting animals, flowers and mushrooms, especially toadstools.
In her paintings, one can sometimes see echoes of her childhood spent in Thailand as well as occasional glimpses into the shamanic non-ordinary dimensions of reality.
Over the years, she has also painted quite a number of self-portraits. La usually paints in her kitchen, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the Thai traditional way. She prefers to paint at night, claiming that she has never been able to adjust to the Central European time zone.
The total number of her paintings now exceeds three hundred, and there are approximately eight hundred drawings as well.
2010
To date, La’s work has been presented at ten individual and nine collective exhibitions in the Czech Republic, Poland and France.
Her paintings and drawings have also appeared in more than a dozen magazine articles in the Czech Republic, Great Britain and Italy.
In 2020, Manuel Anceau gave a lecture on La’s paintings as part of a series organized by Mrs. Lise Maurer at the Institut Protestant de Théologie in Paris, and in the same year Pavel Konečný additionally published a comprehensive selection of her drawings in his “Marginalie” edition.
In 2021, Revolver Revue published Ondřej Sekanina's book: “The Shamanic Rosary,” inspired by La’s stories about her childhood spent in the Thai countryside and which was illustrated by her paintings.
La’swork is included in a number of Czech, French and Polish private collections, including two of the most important Polish collections – those of Andrzej Kwasiborski and Leszek Macak. Also, in 2022, the Silesian Museum in Katowice purchased a large number of her works.
Ondřej Sekanina, 2024
Beauty and Amanitas
oil on canvas, 90 x 100 cm
Hunter and Amanita
oil on canvas, 90 x 110 cm
Big Self-Portrait
oil on canvas, 120 x 90 cm
Garden of Heavenly Delights
oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm
Archer
oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Buddha in the Jungle
oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Sun and Sunflower
oil on canvas, 130 x 90 cm
2011
Woman and Monkeys
oil on canvas, 90 x 90 cm
How I Learned to Walk
oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm
Old Sun
oil on canvas, 90 x 90 cm
Catdog and Goldfish
oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm
Dancing Frogs
oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm
Two Spirits
oil on canvas, 90 x 70 cm
Shaman - my Father
oil on canvas, 80 x 70 cm
2012
Bird Repairer
oil on canvas, 100 x 70 cm
Bananasausagefish
oil on canvas, 45 x 60 cm
Self-Portrait Selling Flowers
oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm
Flowers and Venus Passing in front of the Sun
oil on canvas, 130 x 100 cm
2013
Phuket II
oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm
Me, Nakonda and our Animals in Bed
oil on canvas, 90 x 90 cm
Self-Portrait
oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm
2014
Nierika
oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm
Self-Portrait (Cook a Frog)
oil on canvas, 80 x 70 cm
Winter Self-Portrait
oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm
Flower
oil on canvas, 70 x 80 cm
Mona Lisa with Caterpillar
oil on canvas, 90 x 70 cm
2015
Shaman
oil on canvas, 80 x 70 cm
Self-Portrait with Renowned Artist
oil on canvas, 80 x 70 cm
2016
Tiger Woman
oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm
Buddha in the Whale
oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm
Jonah in the Whale
oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm
Man, Dog and Green Mouse
oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm
2017
Self-Portrait in Cap
oil on canvas, 90 x 80 cm
Deer and Parasol Mushrooms
oil on canvas, 90 x 100 cm
Owl Family
oil on canvas, 100 x 90 cm
Flamingo
oil on canvas, 80 x 90 cm
Dinosaur and Turtle
oil on canvas, 90 x 100 cm
Sea Goblin
oil on canvas, 110 x 90 cm
Self-Portrait on Bike with Sheep
oil on canvas, 90 x 110 cm
Self-Portrait as Butterfly
oil on canvas, 100 x 90 cm
Sunflowers and Rabbit
oil on canvas, 110 x 90 cm
2018
Woman with Watermelon
oil on canvas, 130 x 90 cm
Woman with Green Vase
oil on canvas, 130 x 90 cm
Mushroom Fairy
oil on canvas, 110 x 80 cm
Red Sun
oil on canvas, 90 x 80 cm
Spirit with Third Eye
oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm
Head Made of Snakes
oil on canvas, 80 x 70 cm
Mermaid
oil on canvas, 90 x 80 cm
Mermaid with Boyfriend
oil on canvas, 90 x 80 cm
Head Made of Seafood
oil on canvas, 90 x 70 cm
Moon with Rabbit
oil on canvas, 90 x 80 cm
2018
Flower - Abstract Face
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Pregnant
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Flower Made of Eyes
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Harlequin with Snake
drawing on paper, 30 x 42,5 cm
Buddha in Volcano
drawing on paper, 30 x 42 cm
Robosombat
drawing on paper, 30 x 42 cm
2019
Wilting Rose
oil on canvas, 90 x 50 cm
Handbag
oil on canvas, 90 x 50 cm
Amanita Woman
oil on canvas, 90 x 50 cm
Shenzhen Demon
oil on canvas, 120 x 90 cm
Owl
oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm
Green Tomcat
oil on canvas, 110 x 90 cm
Family in Vortex
oil on canvas, 80 x 50 cm
Frog on Lotus
oil on canvas, 90 x 70 cm
Birds and Mushrooms
oil on canvas, 90 x 70 cm
Sun and Mountains
oil on canvas, 90 x 130 cm
2019
Butterflies
drawing on paper, 30 x 42 cm
Flowers
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Big Violet Flower
drawing on paper, 30 x 42 cm
Bride
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Wings
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Root Fairy
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
2020
Peek Between Legs
oil on canvas, 90 x 50 cm
Dead Coronavirus
oil on canvas, 90 x 80 cm
Adam and Eve – the Last People
oil on canvas, 60 x 90 cm
2020
Statue of Liberty
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Violet Flowers with La’s Own Hands
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Blue and Violet Flowers
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Sun Washing Coronaviruses
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Peek Between Legs
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Face Mask
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Angel Washing Coronavirus
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Coronavirus with Babies in Tree
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Sun Washing Coronaviruses
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
Coronavirus Hawkmoth
drawing on paper, 30 x 42 cm
Coronavirus with Facemask
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
People Killing Mushroom
drawing on paper, 42 x 30 cm
2018 - joint exhibition with Iva Folajtárová at the Folk Art Museum in Příkazy near Olomouc, Czech Republic
2018 - participation in a collective exhibition from the collection of Pavel Konečný in Luhačovice, Czech Republic
2019 - solo exhibition “Sun with Cubs” at the Artinbox Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic
2019 - solo exhibition “My Father Was a Shaman” at the Bastion Gallery in Tábor, Czech Republic
2019 - solo exhibition “Buddhas, Fish and Mermaids” at the Artmaterial Gallery in Děčín, Czech Republic
2019 - participation in a collective exhibition from the collection of Pavel Konečný at the Pasáž Gallery in Přerov, Czech Republic
2021 - participation in a collective exhibition from the collections of Pavel Konečný and Andrzej Kwasiborski at the Dom Darmstadt Center in Plock near Warsaw, Poland
2022 - participation in the collective exhibition “Trouvé sur le bord” from the collection of Pavel Konečný at the Czech Center in Paris
2022 - participation in a collective exhibition from the collections of Pavel Konečný and Andrzej Kwasiborsky in the exhibition space of Česká spořitelna in Brno, Czech Republic
2022 - participation in the collective exhibition “Floralie” at the Artinbox Gallery in Prague
2022 - participation in the collective exhibition “Sztuka w coronie” at the Silesian Museum in Katowice, Poland
2023 - solo exhibition “Rabbit on Wheels” at the Art Brut Prague Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic
2023 - joint exhibition with Kasia Mielcarek at Stacja Badawcza - Outsider Art Gallery in Krakow, Poland
2023 - participation in the collective exhibition “Pierwiastek żeński” at the Silesian Museum in Katowice, Poland
2023 - solo exhibition “La – Daughter of the Sun” at the Art Brut Gallery in Lublin, Poland
2024 - participation in the collective exhibition “ Wojny nigdy dość!” at the Silesian Museum in Katowice, Poland
2025 – solo exhibition „Grids and Lattices“ at Stacja Badawcza
- Outsider Art Gallery in Krakow, Poland