I became interested in art at age seven or eight. My parents were not rich and Burma itself was very poor at that time (it still is), so we only had one book for study. When I practised in school, I had to use a piece of slate. I continued to paint in high school and would copy paintings for my friends, but I eventually had to study law at university because there was nowhere to study art.
In 1988 a student was killed by the police, and we demonstrated with other students against this. There were a lot of changes in our country at this time and all the students and many people tried to struggle for democracy. I became the student leader in my town, near the delta area, and the military had their eyes on me.
After 1998, the military took over and I ran away to the jungle, near the Indian border. Most of the students believed that we must fight for democracy and I was part of that movement.
I lived in a student camp in the jungle, and met a famous artist there who taught me different styles of drawing, but we didn't have any materials. We had only two sheets of A4 paper per day to use, so I had to practise on the newspaper. This was fine because I couldn't read anyway.
I spent four years in the jungle. We faced a big problem there because two student groups had a power struggle. One group accused the other of being spies and I ended up being tortured before escaping.
I went back to university and decided to choose an artist's life, putting on two solo exhibitions in Rangoon [now called Yangon]. At the time I was interested in abstract art, but people thought it was strange and I found it difficult to survive.
In 1998 a former comrade who lived in Mandalay wrote a letter to other friends, mentioning the political movement and saying who might be interested. In the letter, he mentioned my name.
At midnight on May 31 1998 the authorities came to arrest me in the small house where I lived with my wife, who worked as a seamstress. My 18-month-old daughter was asleep. They asked lots of questions. I said: "Yes, I know this guy, we met in the jungle, but I didn't know their plans. I can see my name here, yes, but I didn't know about this." They gave me seven years.
When criminal prisoners first enter the jail they are sent to the pon-san cell. Here they are taught prison discipline and, in particular, the squatting positions that prisoners must assume every morning and evening for several hours while they are being counted, and whenever a senior prison official comes to inspect them.
The cell is overseen by the chief trustee, a prisoner who has a lot of authority in jail because he provides a regular income to the governor. The amount of time prisoners spend there varies from an hour to a week, depending on their wealth. The well-connected pay the trustee off early and move to a normal cell, while the poor are also let off quickly; but those whom the trustee thinks could be squeezed for money are kept there and bullied and beaten until they find some. Political prisoners avoid this, and are sent straight to their cells where another prisoner will explain the situation to them.
At the prison in Mandalay, we complained about the local requirement to bow our heads when a senior official inspected and not look him in the eye. As a result of raising this, and various other grievances, around 15 of us were systematically beaten in May 2000 before being transferred to distant jails. I was sent to Myaungmya in the delta. Although, like all prisoners, I suffered multiple deprivations while in jail, this was the only time I was physically abused.
It took me a year to start painting properly in prison. I had to befriend a prison guard, who would bring me colour but no brushes. I had to find other things to paint with. The first thing I found was the secret lighter. They were not allowed but we were able to get hold of one. I realised I could use the wheel to paint with, so I took the lighter apart and used part of it as a ruler, and the wheel to paint with. I started painting on plastic, then began to use bits of our white cotton uniform. I did 20 paintings with the first lighter, and in my cell I put on an exhibition for the 30 other political prisoners. I had to pay the guard to let me do it and he gave me two hours.
In my paintings I wanted to describe life in jail, to show the reality of the situation. It was hard to draw images from memory, but I didn't worry about this because I had so much inspiration from my prison life, and it was so hard to find the time to paint because of the prison guards, and sometimes I didn't have any uniform to paint on.
I tried to get information from prisoners and my contacts about where the other guards were, who was in the tower. I had to know where every guard was. I would say, "If you bring me colour to paint with you can see my paintings, and there will be no political problem here, it's just painting." I eventually smuggled lots outside.
I painted Waiting for Father almost two years after my arrest, imagining my family waiting for me to return. Their standing in the neighbourhood would be diminished by being a fatherless family, so I painted this picture small. I used a stick, and oil paints. The cotton came from a thin shirt and was hard to paint on.
The Return shows my family returning home from a jail visit. It was painted using a syringe full of paint, and the end of the syringe needle was used to speckle the clouds.
I was part of a demonstration in the Mandalay prison, for which I spent seven months on death row as punishment, although not because I was condemned to death. It was a different environment from the political prisoners' cells, where we talked of poetry and politics. On death row, the prisoners compared murder stories and talked of miserable things.
Death Row, which I painted after being transferred back to the political prisoners' block, shows the faces of prisoners in two rows of five cells, distorted with stress, and without hope of release. Six of them are painted by printing from the back of a large plastic photo of Buddha I was able to keep in my cell. Four of them were painted using a syringe. I had quite easy access to syringes at the time because a medical orderly in the jail was a former poet and we had a mutual friend from Myaungmya.
I obtained quite a lot of material from departing criminal prisoners who often had two or three that they would sell for 10 cigarettes or for 50-100 kyats before they left. But they were very dirty because the prisoners were usually doing filthy work and didn't have time, soap or water to wash properly. It would take me two or three washes to get these clean enough, which was more tiring than actually painting.
In total I completed over 1,000 paintings in prison. Many were stored at home but, unfortunately, my wife (who wanted a divorce) became very angry at my situation and destroyed everything. So I only have around 230 paintings left. When I was released I carried on painting, but continued with my prison technique. Before prison my style was abstract, but prison allowed me to find my true art form.
