Two female artists are finding their voice in Vientiane By Sally Pryor
O
lé Viravong Scovill was just seven years old when she started drawing. First, it was a comic book; she created a story about a girl who wants to become a painter, but is too poor to realise her dream. Later, growing up in Vientiane, she would buy magazines, and copy photographs of actors and singers. As soon as she finished school, she went to art school in Thailand. At just 18, it was the first time Olé had ever left her family, much less the country.
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What followed was a rigorous, fiveyear journey of discovery, in which she discovered several things. The first was that studying art, and being an artist, was truly difficult. There were weeks, months and years of perfecting one subject – the nude body, hands, flowers, sunrise and sunset – before moving onto the next. The second discovery was a complicated relationship with colour. One of her professors warned her she might be colour-blind, as her works tended to be dark – physically and thematically. For her final thesis,
