A Taste of Thai...and other delights

When I was a boy aged 11 years, my aunt took me on an overnight bus trip to visit the reconstructed Colonial Settlement at Williamsburg, Virginia. The thing I remember most about that trip was the overwhelming southern-style breakfast buffet we experienced the next morning...it was endless! I had never seen so much diversity of menu in one place before! Needless to say, it took a very long time for me to finish breakfast!

Experiencing Thailand for the first time, as a visual artist, my experience was much the same... Thailand is an endless buffet of visual delight and stimulation, based in an ancient culture that is many, many layers deep - and with many simple, yet, complex flavors. Any showing of art from such a profound and deep history could only be the most fleeting glimpse of an ancient way of life that is, today, being challenged to navigate the rapid migration of differing values and beliefs now occurring across the planet.

As the effect of global restructuring accelerates in our societies, it often seems that we are experiencing a wrenching isolation from our roots in the natural world and within ourselves. In our continuing search for more wholistic, stress-free and healthy life systems, we are turning to the wisdom of ancient people. Much of their wisdom was gleaned from the natural world within a time-sense totally different from that lived today. I have spent many years living in cultures that are still guided by this ancient wisdom, and, my photographic "eye" has been profoundly influenced by these ancient ways of seeing...

Thailand is one of those ancient cultures, with a history and culture of healing / nurturing techniques that go back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Even a short visit here has profoundly altered not only my sense of physical structure but also the sense of time in which that structure occurs...with the result that, in these quick glimpses of Thailand (and the American wilderness), you may experience a little of the physiological, psychological, and spiritual "connection" we have with the stillness of Eternity as it manifests here, in the Land of Smiles...

As a photographer, I feel one of my responsibilities is to use my craft to preserve and help awaken in others that which is most exalted about life. I invite you to remember that the truest form of healing rises from within, through self awareness, and hope that these images will inspire you to STOP...LOOK AROUND...and feel the ocean of beauty in which you swim...

Sawasdeekrup!