Throughout the month of May Manfred Winkler exposes his wonderfully creative, playful and sensitive mind through an art exhibition in Bangkok – Why Did He Not Kill Me? Liz Smailes meets the heart and soul that refuses to grow old.

Three days before Manfred’s exhibition opens at MuMu art gallery, Bangkok, we meet for tea in one of Bangkok’s oldest established hotels, the Dusit Thani. It was 37 degrees out­side and the sweltering heat came with a high humidity, but the 82 year old artist takes it all in his stride.

“I don’t think it’s a case of it being any hotter than other years, I think we have just been spoilt with more cooler than usu­al temperatures in the past few months,” he explains. “But I will bring my paintings in to show, it’s better for them to be out of this heat too”.

Observing the eco-system and following a keen botanical interest are one of several reasons that have kept Man Winkler living an expatriate life in Thailand for over 40 years, and like many, he describes his arrival here as an accident.

“I first came here in 1961. At the time I was living in Australia and I was fly­ing back there from Europe. We were supposed to land in Hong Kong but there was a really bad typhoon that forced the plane to land in Bangkok and kept us here for three days. I stayed in the Kings Hotel on Sathorn Road, I think it’s still there today, but one day I went out to visit temples and couldn’t find my way back.

“It turned out that the hotel wasn’t registered, even the police couldn’t tell me where it was and I thought well, this is a pretty cool place to be. You can just disappear here and become one of a crowd and nobody will know. The freedom associated with that appealed, and then I finally found my way back to the hotel with the help of mafia gun traders” laughs Man.

Man is an endearing soul with absolutely no reason to disappear off any radar screen, other than his own desire to live a humble life. I first met Man in 2004 and admired his work at the time, which was to set his collection of photographs to words and music using Quicktime – a project he called Pixtremes. At the time my parents were just coming to terms with email technology and here was a 78 year old doing something more hip and funky on the computer than most teenagers could ever dream of.

Therein lays also the secret to the success of Man’s work. A graphic artist by trade, his creative, playful mind is forever exploring new ideas, which when juxtaposed with his life experience creates something highly fun and deeply profound.

His current exhibition is a collection of forty miniature acrylic paintings. “I only started doing these in June 2008, when the plans for my graphic novel came to a halt. It was a bit of a challenge really, for me to try and get away from the illustrative nature of my previous work…I suppose they rep­resent my inner thoughts really. Some are quite dark from a period when I was quite ill, some are a reaction to the religious freaks in America that are so anti-democratic and voiced their opinions during the Obama election, and some are just my random musings on what is going on in our environ­ment.”

Of the sixteen miniatures brought in from the heat and laid out beside us, two descriptions and images caught my eye. “Thorny Refuge – draws me into an incomprehensible world. Wild, yet subtle, colours, ferocious subject matter. Introducing other-than-human creature forming a harmony of their own”.

Man grins, almost cheekily, and explains how he used LED photography to go into the jungle at night in order to capture the right atmosphere on film. Then, using that as a reference he begins to express his thoughts and the world he sees within his environment and his imagination.

“It takes time, you know, to observe plant and animal life. I think that is what has kept me here, the diversity of it all in the tropical climate, you just never stop discovering new and remarkable things”.

Prior to moving to Bangkok, most of his professional experiences were in the commercial art scene, specifically as advertising art director of a major agency in Sydney and Bangkok. As early as 1975 he also began pursuing a path as a book illustrator in less commercially oriented ventures. Even then his motivations were driven by concern for the natural environment.

The self-written and illustrated coffee table book ‘A Casual Stroll Through Siam’s Orchid World’ became a milestone in that genre at the time. After retiring from advertising, he be­came more involved in book design and illustration. Also multimedia activities began to draw his attention, culminating in producing an experimental DVD of imagessoundand text.

Throughout our meeting one image constantly attracts my attention, “Jar Souls” – A collec­tion of various souls finds itself confined inside a jar. Normally this would not perturb them. But one of them discovers a suitable reed for a flute and with gusto he plays his new instru­ment, much to the disgust of the other souls, who feel robbed of the desire for self-pity.

From the captions accompanying the miniatures, the interplay of images and text is clearly an aspect that continues to intrigue Man. While working on the pictures, he explained to me how the words and frames are also in play simultaneously. His latest efforts on display at MuMu reflect and express this newly found mental freedom.

“Its quite intense going deep inside yourself to find out what is going on. Sometimes an idea is growing with me for days and weeks, other times its there in an instant. I am really curious to see and hear peoples’ reactions when they see this new collection. Some are better than others, but on the whole I think they have worked out pretty alright,” he chuckles.