Pornchai Lethammasiri Enjoys the Challenges of Painting With Coffee

Pornchai Lethammasiri is another artist from Thailand who uses coffee as his medium of choice. I came across his name on Asia-Art.net.

Pornchai experienced some of the same trials and tribulations that I did and I’m assuming other coffee artists have. Texture of the coffee has to just right. I condense my coffee and if done incorrectly is will become elastic and difficult to manipulate on the support. Drying time with coffee is longer than watercolor but shorter than oils and depending on your technique could take weeks in some areas and hours in others. Mold is an issue because coffee is an organic. I use a varnish on my artwork to ensure it is sealed and safe from mold.

His subject matter is very different than mine and even the other coffee artists mentioned in this blog. Waterfalls, distant mountains and boats. Very indicative of his homeland and very beautiful! He got the idea to paint with coffee from the Chinese using tea to tint the background of their paintings.

On of the things that amazes me about this guy is that he does a 30” x 30” painting in about 15 minutes. His work looks like he spent much more time on it. Most of my work takes hours to days to complete.

Full article and a Q&A session with Pornchai

At some point early in 2006 I plan to contact all of the coffee artist mentioned in this blog and more if I can find them to see if they are interested in doing a large scale coffee painting show here in Seattle. To have that many coffee artist together in one place would surely be something to witness. I’ll keep you post on developments.

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