Min Wae Aung
Min Wae Aung is an internationally recognised artist who creates beautiful paintings that usually depict the movement of monks, nuns and other people through the streets and pathways of Myanmar.
Read the article about this brilliant Myanmar artist and then test your vocabulary knowledge.
Min Wae Aung was born in 1960 in Danubyu, a river port city in the Irrawaddy delta. His father hauled goods for a living. Min Wae Aung spent much of his childhood playing at a nearby monastery, a second home of sorts, where he befriended novices and helped the monks with their tasks.
Min Wae Aung—one of Myanmar's most celebrated contemporary artists—is best known for his stylized depictions of Buddhist monks in vivid, burnt-orange robes on striking gold backgrounds. Faces are rarely shown, because Min Wae Aung likes to emphasize the monks' movement, and he says their anonymity helps convey how they are "leaving humanity behind" and going to a peaceful place, like Nirvana.
Nowadays, Min Wae Aung lives and works in Golden Valley, one of Yangon's upscale residential districts. He is a well established international artist, whose paintings hang in art galleries all over the world, and who has held more than 50 international exhibitions. Demand for Southeast Asian art is booming with foreigners comprising over 90% of Min Wae Aung's clients. Paintings in Min Wae Aung's monk series now fetch as much as $20,000.
All Min Wae Aung's paintings are of people talking, walking and working, but they are always on their feet, as they would be in their daily lives. He depicts people in scorching reds and golden yellows, giving the impression that they are out in the daytime sun and heat. With Min Wae Aung's paintings, what the viewer does is peer into each painting, as if standing in the shade and looking out at the heat of the day.
Find the words in the article that match the following definitions:
(n) a public display or show of items (para 3)
(adj) having a period of financial success (para 3)
(n) customers (para 3)
(v) to look in a focused manner (para 4)
(v) to become friendly with someone (para 1)
(v) to communicate meaning (para 4)
(v) to carry long distances (para 1)
(adj) relatively expensive / upmarket (para 3)
(adj) recent and modern (para 2)
(adj) bright, intense (para 4)
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