YANGON: Painted on scraps of clothing with carved soap, cigarette lighters and even syringes, Htein Lin’s artworks were his lifeline during years in Myanmar jails — and the spark for an extraordinary love story.

“These paintings were really dangerous and also precious,” said the 46-year-old former student protest leader, who produced more than 200 works during his six-and-a-half years in jail under the junta.

“I really wanted to tell the government that locked me up for nothing: ‘you might have put me behind bars but you cannot imprison my creativity’,” he said.

Htein Lin was arrested in 1998 and imprisoned on the basis of an intercepted letter from a former “comrade” naming him as potentially still interested in opposition activity.

Jail was fraught with hardship such as beatings, solitary confinement and unsanitary conditions, but it also became his “studio”.

Using any material he could get his hands on Htein Lin — who had previously focused on performance art — channelled his creativity to express the injustices that were a part of life during decades of military rule.

With names like “Shadow of Hope”, “Back from the Chain Gang” and “Self Torture for 6 Years”, the paintings writhe with colour, depicting anything from contorted figures to abstract designs.

Held first in Mandalay prison and then at Myaungmya, close to his home town in the Irrawaddy delta region, the artist was able not only to receive the occasional batch of smuggled paint, but also to sneak the collection out.

The paintings are “strongly entwined with my life”, Htein Lin told AFP in Yangon on a recent rare visit to Myanmar, where political changes under a reformist government have raised hopes of a new era of openness.

After he was freed in 2004 the artist came to the attention of then-British ambassador Vicky Bowman, who visited him and persuaded him to let her take the paintings for his own security.

“When we met, she told me that these paintings were dangerous for me to keep and I should give them to her if I trusted her. So I gave them all to her — I really felt like I was giving her my whole life,” he said.

The meeting, the first of many as the pair catalogued the works, was to kindle a love affair between the diplomat and the dissident.—AFP