Artist Htoo Aung Kyaw

Search Truth + Cause and Effect is a diptych. I began the process of painting the married canvases in 2016 right up to the end of 2017. During the same period I was enduring many trials and tribulations as a newlywed, about-to-be and later first-time father. “What is the truth amongst the chaos?” I repeatedly asked myself. As an average Buddhist from Myanmar I espouses a conventional belief system based on Buddha’s teachings about how to live. It is the stories from my childhood that are a source of great inspiration. This particular piece with I have created a harmonious tension between the emotion of the abstract expressionist background to contrasts the realistic renditions of Buddhist sculptures from the 10th century Bagan Dynasty. This is how I sums it up: There are four sights of a man bent with old age, a person afflicted with sickness, a corpse, and a wandering ascetic. It was the fourth sight, that of a wandering ascetic, that filled Siddhartha with the sense of urgency to find out what lay at the root of human suffering. In the same way that the four sights are what prompted Siddharta’s deep and extreme reflection, my silent hardships in my new role as provider and protector of my young family caused me to “search truth” The culmination of this pursuit for truth is the ‘effect’ part of the cosmic relationship ‘ cause and effect ’. And so I created this intense and recursive artwork about it. Everything is “ Cause and Effect ” is the concept he strongly believe and also added the paragraph about it as the buddha said using ancient Myanmar script that was used in over 2000 years ago . That mean in English is , “ Whatever laws are produced from cause , the cause of these , the Tathagata has expounded ,as well as the cessation of both the cause and the effect . This is the teaching of the great ascetic . ”