A friend of mine once told me that if a foreigner chooses to come and start again in Phuket then they must be pretty strange in one way or another. Part of his argument was that it was nigh on impossible to ever really know who they are, or who they once were and how far apart the discrepancy actually was.

While I tend to agree with him that Phuket certainly throws up many ?colourful? characters, one has to wade through endless tides of drab greys to find a character that is vibrant and fun, and strange? in a good way.

So when I met a French artist who introduced himself as merely Bobol, I was optimistic that I had found a colourful and strange character, in a good way.

?I?m called after the French slang for amphetamine,? Bobol began, ?People called me that when I was just a skinny kid because I used to do a lot of it.?

Back then, he recounts, he had not begun painting or drawing and instead just wrote, but all that changed along with his lifestyle.

In 1985, Bobol left France and after a few months picked up a rotring art pen.

?I moved to Spain and I also spent a wonderful period of my life in Tahiti,? Bobol said with an almost-visible smile beneath his handlebar moustache.

Bobol?s time in Tahiti proved to be somewhat of a pilgrimage as he had always enjoyed the work of fellow Frenchman Gauguin ? which is predominantly pictures of beautiful Tahitian girls in their ?natural? state.

?He painted the girls there, as I did and as I do. I try to do what he did but 100 years later on,? said Bobol.

Bobol left Tahiti and came to Phuket, where he has been for 18 years. He has never returned to France. Since arriving on the island, he has made over 2,000 pictures ? created in his own inimitable style and painted more than 50 large canvas pieces, the majority of them are of his favourite subject matter.

?I love to paint girls, beautiful Asian girls. They have everything; circles and squares and light and shade??

Bobol estimates that around 90% of his drawings are of the female form, with the other 10% depicting Phuket towns, streets, scenes and festivals.

The majority of his hand sketches use the rotring art pen, which has an extremely fine tip that allows him to create an incredible level of detail, created by hundreds and thousands of little dots.

This method is now - at least to the Phuket underground French art scene (yes there is one) - referred to as Boboliennes. Well-placed dots create the emotion, features and expression of his charcters.

Flicking through one of his many books of sketches, he points to a Phuket Vegetarian Festival scene that he captured a few years ago, and says, ?Sometimes I take five hours to create a particular drawing.?

Bobol lived and worked at an artist?s studio along Soi Romanee in Phuket town for 13 years before moving to his current apartment. Now Bobol lives and works on the second floor of a backstreet Phuket town shop house.

The massage table - which also doubles as his bed - is surrounded by prints, sketches and a huge book collection.

?Paintings and books are my life,? said Bobol, ?I only go outside to eat and then I return home straight away. Sometimes I go to the karaoke bar and sing some songs in Thai, but I don?t really have many friends, pets or even a lover, I make peace not love.?

Slightly embarrassed by such an honest statement, I averted my eyes from his gaze and looked around his room; most of the images were of women in various forms of undress, so I didn?t really believe that he was 100% committed to just making peace. All his pictures ? without exception - are of Asian girls,I asked him why.

?I like them,? he said, ?The mystery of them, and through painting them I can learn more about that mystery. They?re completely opposite to French girls, with French girls everything she could say I already know and understand.

?So I like learning about Thai girls, I also read Thai and listen to Thai songs, I love learning about their mystery. They?re still a mystery to me, inside and out.?

I asked him which of his paintings was his favourite and he showed me a picture of a bikini-clad woman on a beach. I smiled and asked him what her name was. He replied that he had never met her.

He then explained to me that his technique, rather disappointingly, involves taking photos and then using tracing paper to copy the details. Unfortunately he now has to use other people?s pictures as his camera is broken.

He uses old photos as reference points, but believes the age of the images doesn?t really matter, as he likes to create work about Phuket town, which he believes has not changed a lot since he arrived.

?It?s changed little by little, but she?s still ok, it?s not changed as much as other areas, like Patong for example.?

Bobol admits that he rarely goes there, or anywhere, and leads rather a reclusive life. I get the feeling that he is fine with this and it is through his work, his writings, drawings and reading that he lives.

?In my work I like to draw ideas of utopia,? said Bobol. In Bobol?s utopian world, there are, of course Asian women, especially Tahitian women.

?My perfect woman is like this, no civilisation; half naked with flowers in their hair.? Bobol, in his own inimitable way, apart from being thankfully fully dressed, lives quite like the Tahitian girls of 100 years ago.

He doesn?t have a telephone, TV or an email address, so contacting him, he admits, is rather difficult?

?Usually people just shout up to my window ? Bobol! And I come down.?

Bobol also writes and receives long hand-written letters often from his now two grown up children in France, but these are the only ways he communicates.

?I don?t have a telephone because I don?t want to be disturbed during my painting, for me mobile phones are not my time. You see people messaging and calling each other 20 times a day. But this is their way, not mine,?

Unsurprisingly Bobol is also not on twitter or Facebook, ?People never use their real name, so you never really know who they are.?

Quite true and it was with that parting sentiment, that I left the man who wished to be known only as Bobol.


If you wish to contact Bobol, you can by writing a letter to:

Bobol, P.O. Box 239, Phuket Town,
83000 Phuket, Thailand