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I am a Thai-American artist, born and raised in Seattle, Washington, on occupied Duwamish land.

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My formal art education includes an undergraduate minor in studio art, and experience with sight-size method life drawing at Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy. But my informal, preeminent education stems from my two artistic grandmothers. My American grandmother, a sculptor and industrial designer, taught me the foundations of life drawing, landscapes and composition, while my Thai grandmother taught me how to seek the beauty in everyday elements of our culture, through her meticulously sculpted, painted and arranged miniature renditions of traditional Southeast Asian fruits and vegetables. 

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My artistic exploration is guided by vibrant, tropical colors, surrealist landscapes, and the places, people and food that have impacted my life. I currently work mostly in acrylic paint, as well as digital drawing, and I am expanding into public art. 

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 about @kesavartana.

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Kesavatana is my middle name, my mother’s maiden name, and my Thai surname. As many immigrants and children of immigrants can attest, names like Kesavatana are shortened, erased, butchered, mocked. Sometimes they don’t seem worth the trouble.  

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I grew up watching my mother change her three-letter, monosyllabic name over and over, trying different ways to make her identity more palatable, less off-putting, less foreign. So I mostly let Kesavatana lie silently between my short, relatively easy first and last names, only to be used when filling out a form, only to be acknowledged when somebody noticed the long string of letters and brought it up with curiosity. 

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Then I spent four years living in Thailand, and got to use Kesavatana every day. @kesavartana is my way of continuing to do so, with the addition of a little bit of art. It’s long, it’s unwieldy, it’s difficult to spell and uncomfortable to pronounce, and it’s my name. Kay-sa-wa-ta-na. Learn it, say it, know it.