Dhanat Plewtianyingthawee creates another of his colourful works using special paints prepared by his mother Vatcharaporn, who was the first to recognise her son’s talent. Right, one of Dhanat’s works, which will soon be shown in an exhibition titled ‘Bou

Dhanat Plewtian-yingthawee is only three-and-a-half years old but he's having his first solo art show, called Boundless Imagination, on April 30. The toddler, who first held a paintbrush at 18 months, will exhibit more than 50 of his abstract paintings, which are as large as an open broadsheet newspaper.

"I thank people when they say my paintings are beautiful," says young Dhanat, "and they are really pretty."

The paintings are bright and colourful and he experiments with water spray, straws, plastic wrap, toothbrushes and salt besides using the common paintbrush.

"He came up with all those materials himself and played around with them, except the salt, which was my idea," says Dhanat's mother, Vatcharaporn.

Dhanat has never had an art lesson nor does he practise painting every day. He paints whenever he wants to and normally takes about five to 10 minutes to finish a piece.

"It depends on his mood," says Dhanat's father Dhanu. "We never force him. We want him to be happy and ask for it himself. Some days he only paints one piece and then goes off to play with something else. Some days he paints a lot and keeps asking for more paper."

Like many children, Dhanat was first attracted to painting by the bright colours.

"I came up with different activities so he didn't get bored and painting was one of them," says Vatcharaporn, who manages Interdeco Global Advertising, a media consultant company, with her husband. She also enjoys painting and they go to art shops together.

At the beginning Dhanat's paintings looked deeply ordinary to his father.

"I guess I don't have the artist's eye," says Dhanu. "But my wife saw there was something beautiful in the paintings."

Vatcharaporn slowly went through every inch of her son's paintings and cropped parts of them and placed them onto a background to make Christmas cards and asked about 30 friends if they wanted to place an order.

They first showed the cut-outs to a Canadian artist who lives in Thailand and he liked them. He asked Dhanat if he wanted to sell them but the couple refused to take money from him.

The artist replied: "They're not your paintings, they're your son's and the money is his."

That was the point when the family realised their son's cut-outs had value.

"I wanted to know if other people liked my son's work, so we decided to sell them. If people spend money on them, they must like them. The paintings are pretty so why shouldn't we show them to the public?"

Within weeks they received orders for around 1,000 cards but the attention did not bother the artist. He just kept painting at his own pace while his mother did the hard work.

Some paintings could not be used while others could be cropped into as many as 20 pieces. Vatcharaporn picked out spots, chose a background and turned them into Christmas cards, priced at Bt40 each.

Dhanat's parents put the income in his savings account.

"I save it for my education," says the boy, who studies at Prangtip Kindergarten.

Colours used in Dhanat's paintings are not generally found in the art shops and are created by Vatcharaporn.

"I want eye-catching colours that are easy to use, not messy and can produce beautiful work in a short time," says Dhanu. "I don't want my son to suffer when he paints so I asked my wife to create the colours."

Vatcharaporn spends about one week creating these special liquid paints but refuses to reveal her ingredients.

"My son's work is an outcome from my experimentation in art through my life," says Vatcharaporn, who studies art.

Besides painting, Dhanat can play the violin and speak English. His parents say they never force him, and that it just comes naturally.

Vatcharaporn loves classical music and has been taking her son to concerts and the opera since he was two and he attentively sits through the performances without sleeping or crying.

After a classical concert, a musician asked Dhanat what instrument he wanted to play and he said the violin.

"Before I bought him a violin, I asked him if he was really interested. It was not cheap and if he didn't want to play it I wouldn't buy it. I always teach him about the value of money," says Dhanu.

He finally spent Bt8,000 on the violin and Dhanat takes a 30-minute class once a week.

"The violin makes a beautiful sound and the strings are so soft," Dhanat says.

Dhanu, 55, says parents should not force their children to strive for success. "It's wrong because the kids get stressed. Instead, parents should provide opportunities and expose their children to different activities and observe if they have potential and, most importantly, enjoy it. Then you can assist and promote them. I think every child can develop a special skill if the child and their parents have patience."

Dhanu says it helps that he and his wife are mature parents, meaning they are economically and emotionally stable and can provide plenty of time.

"We raise him ourselves, talk to him a lot and take him with us almost everywhere we go. We talk to him sensibly and logically and we're lucky he has skills to develop and we have potential to develop them," says Vatcharaporn, 45.

The parents spoke English to their child before he could talk. "He never replied or spoke English to us but he understood what we said. One day he met our foreign friends and spoke English to them.

"That made us realise that what we've been trying is effective," says Dhanu.

Dhanat does not have a personal English-speaking tutor and sits with the year above for English because of his advanced skills.

"The teachers say he could be another year above but his hand muscles are not fully developed for writing," says his mother.

Dhanat only speaks English with fair-haired foreigners, which is how he spots English speakers.

He always watches videotapes of English-language children's television shows and his mother spends many hours watching the tapes to select a proper content before she buys them. The family does not have cable TV because they struggle to monitor the violence, even on the cartoon channels.

Dhanat's exhibition will be held on April 30 between 1pm and 5pm at TRSC International Lasik Centre on the sixth floor of the U Chu Liang Building on Rama IV Road. Dr Ekktet Chansue, who is a medical director and founder of the TRSC centre, is sponsoring the exhibition. Dhanat's parents are his patients.

"This could be the world's youngest artist to have an exhibition," says Vatcharaporn. "The next youngest artist we could find online was 19."

Rojana Manowalailao

The Nation