All you need is faith and trust … and a little pixie dust. Phuket-based artist Jay-da Rodnit may not actually have a bag of this magical substance, but she sure makes you feel like she does. The 30-year-old is a bundle of youthful vivaciousness and charm, with a generous sprinkling of electric energy and happiness.
 

Since the sale of her first painting a few years ago she has appeared on national TV, exhibited in Bangkok and, alongside her husband, in a performance for Her Majesty the Queen of Thailand. I first met her last year at an exhibition she and her husband set up for a project called “Love and Sharing”, aimed at raising money for autistic children, a cause she regularly supports these days. Not only is Jay-da an artist, she is also an inspiration to many underprivileged youngsters around Phuket, and is working hard toward encouraging some government officials to establish a real public art gallery on the island. She currently teaches several children who have had no previous contact with art, and a few have turned out to be potential little Leonardo da Vincis.

 
One would never imagine someone who came from the kind of background she did, this now bubbly and confident-sounding woman, would have ended up in a position where she had the nerve to negotiate with government ministers. Jay-da looks pensive when she tells me about alternating between living with her mother and father for four months at a time and how that made her feel. She said she always felt as though she had no place in the world, as though she was a bag that no one really wanted and passed around at random. She was a very different person as a child, with none of the confidence with which she now bursts. However, out of blackness, grief and heartache Jay-da has blossomed with an incredible energy, and has the desire to self explore and live life to the max. “What I see is that there is good and bad in the world. You can choose to focus on the good or the bad; it’s up to you.”

Jay-da first remembers art impinging on her life when she got smacked by her father at the age of six for scribbling on the wall with charcoal. Later, in school, she won prizes for creating the most unusual artwork in her class, and she loved to make dolls and other toys to give friends. She was good at her studies and, while her home life was difficult, with frequent violence and other problems, school provided just the sort of haven she needed. But the fun stopped at the age of ten. Her parents couldn’t afford to keep sending her to school, and so she began a life of laundry, cleaning and cooking.

As a young teenager, Jay-da took jobs in cafés, hotels and restaurants, but was never satisfied. She got bored quickly. Studiously observing everyone around her, she set herself to learning as much about culinary skills as she did about hotel management and public relations. “I have no fear,” she told me in her wacky Rawai studio, all strewn with old newspapers, cardboard boxes, paints and mountains of books. “I have had this feeling that if I want to do something I can do it for a long time now. When I worked in restaurants all those years ago, I wasn’t content to not know the answers to everything. So I watched the chefs, and asked them to teach me how to chop spices and, eventually, how to cook properly.
“I realized at a young age that I could either wallow in self-pity and be eaten up by anger about my life, or I could fight. I chose to survive, and my motto is ‘Never say never.’ Nowadays, while I enjoy being in my studio and spending time with my husband, I want to devote a larger part of my energy to raising awareness among others. An awareness that anything is possible, if we are determined enough and take risks.

“At night I read books and magazines that I collect from anywhere.” Her pink dreadlocks bounce with enthusiasm. “I’m a bookaholic. I read anything and everything, and it all stems from my past,” she says in nearly perfect English. “I didn’t want to stop studying just because my family was poor, so I read all I could, in English and Thai. When I was 18, I worked in a Patong restaurant but wanted more, so I applied for a position in a prestigious hotel in Hua Hin and got the job. There, I met a manager who took me to work in the Caribbean.

“In my spare time over there I was bored, and I bought a bunch of children’s paints and paper and sat at the beach a lot painting,” she says with a grin. “Then one day a man came along and paid me $100 for one of my paintings. Since then, I’ve been learning and developing my style. And here I am now.”

It’s not possible to pigeonhole Jay-da’s style, but one thread that runs through it involves hope, happiness, primary colours and the inner child. I saw garden fairies, sequins, elves, fun, magic and fresh air in her paintings. Her recent work portraying Phuket made me think of enchanted woods and celestial cities. Completely different from her husband Wacharin’s creations, Jay-da’s express her childlike feelings about herself and the world, while his are of nature, complex thoughts and fears. She is a remarkably compassionate person, and cares deeply about showing others the same diamond-sprinkled path in life that she has found.

Jay-da’s husband is very much part of the fabric of this new life she has built for herself. The two are inseparable. She has said of him, “We are like the light and shadow in a painting; if one is missing the work is not complete.”

Three years ago, Jayda was in Patong and decidedly not in the mood for boyfriends. Answering the call of nature, she popped into an art shop to use the bathroom. Watcharin was sitting at the door of the shop painting and thinking about his new life in Surat Thani. He was bored with Phuket, and had booked a truck to take him home that night. The rest, as they say, is history. The two are deeply in love. They are a pair, two peas in a pod. People have even likened them to twins, because they know what the other is going to say and have many similar physical characteristics.
“He’s not like other Thai husbands,” says Jay-da, “He allows me to be myself and is not jealous of my work. He calls me Tinkerbell because I’m always flitting around and full of beans, and I’m naughty and childlike too, at times,” she smiles and then erupts with one of her volcanic bursts of laughter.

She’s a tonic, a real tonic. “Now think of the happiest things …”
Current project: At the moment Jay-da and a fairly well known Swedish artist, Jonas, are planning a joint exhibition to raise awareness about art in their respective countries.

“I Am Me, You Are You” Exhibition, Sweden, September 2004.