Walking down the stairs to Tsunami Restaurant at the JW Marriott Hotel, the first thing that greets you is a huge picture of a Japanese girl rendered in vivid, bold colors. This painting is quite characteristic of the style of Belgium-born, Bangkok-based Christian Develter. Having been educated in Antwerp, Christian’s background is in fashion, but he is now practicing fine arts—and from the look of the exhibition at the popular Japanese restaurant, is doing a fine job at getting his work noticed, too. This exhibition focuses on Japanese people—both traditional characters like sumo and geisha, as well as current ones like street funky Shinjuku girls—all in flashy colors and lines (“very colorful,” he says). His paintings can be seen at Tsu until Jun 30.

There are several different types of paintings in this collection. Which one is truly your style?
Actually they’re all my style because when people look at these paintings, what they are seeing is coming from me—no mater what type it is. It’s a combination of colors. I paint oils with a paint-knife. It’s kind of a difficult technique, which I adopted from a very old Belgian style. It makes a strong line in the picture and you can see differences between oil and acrylic painting, for which I use brushes only. It’s like an experiment combining new things.

Why are the Japanese the theme of this collection?
Even when I was living in Europe, before I came to Asia, I was already making a lot of Asian paintings—a lot of Japanese and Chinese subjects. But because my work was going to be shown in this particular restaurant, I decided to only do Japanese. What impresses me is the color scheme: Japanese zen, which is simple, calm and solid. It’s kind of a challenge to use colors in my style in this context while still retaining the Japanese flair.

Where do the people in your paintings come from?
Some are based on old prints, but I mixed them with other materials and with my imagination, making it my own style. They’re not actual portrait paintings.

Did Memoirs of a Geisha have any influence on your collection?
You’re not the first who asked that. Actually, no, because I thought the movie was a Western interpretation of a Japanese story with Chinese actors. My work is based on real Japanese.