Mythical Tablets

There has been a stretch of time, between a few months, where painting has been paused, to make way for some different medium to take a shine.

Of late I have been quite reserved on how to put forth ideas and execution when I sit down to paint. I did start using oils, something I haven’t really used before, and that have been marvellous even just from a colouring perspective, how different it works compared to acrylic. But on top of that, the time it has given me to really work on a singular surface have extended and the mailability of working with oils gave me the push to move slower rather than rushing through.

The turn to start introducing figures into my work have been the result of further readings I’ve done on Javanese mysticism, a way to learn more about the collaborative ways of people and nature. Processing that through for visual interpretation was trying but again, it was (how I feel) a necessary step to slow the movements down for purpose and intention. Compare to the mostly fast execution with abstract landscapes, where it was very much of being in that moment without stepping back until towards the end.

But the last few months I am drawn to working with clay again.

Experimenting with pottery have been a most refreshing breeze, a complete opposite to working with flat surfaces to add layers, I could create forms in reality in real time.

I have been looking at ancient clay tablets and story telling, the ways that ancient clay tablets and models would depicts daily lives or more grand gestures of depicting gods and goddesses. One of the oldest form of creativity, other than the ochres on cave walls of hunting scenes, is the use of clay. From firing vessels to cary water, cups and bowls to documenting business trading and put forth the story how wars were won or power of kings.

There is something truly magical in the combination of elements to create such objects. You add water to earth, dry these forms and fire with such extreme heat that these forms are then set forever. When extreme care is upheld, such a thing is possible, with some cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia dating back to 4000BC and the findings of ceramic vessels in archaeological sites are usually the first things to be unearthed. It stands the lapse of human discovery, still holding strong the imagination of its time.

So far a few small “etches” have been tried, a very similar approach to drawing but on a flattened piece of clay, carved with a precision applicator using slip to add the illustrations without the need to add colourful glaze. I find that this creates a minimalist finish to the piece, two tone aesthetics like what you would get from etching prints. Creating stories visually and transforming them into clay tablets. So far the move to the depth of what clay has to offer is slow, but for something that could last forever, I feel that the necessary pathway should be of certainty and intent.

Elemental Landscapes

Myths, fables and folk knowledge have always been of particular interest to my art. Whether it was to seek inspirations for my painting, writing subjects or sewing ideas for my ‘Fables of the Hands’ side project. The extensive understanding of the world and to the extend of the universe from such natural origins and at times instinctive approach have birthed connections to oral and visual ways of sharing knowledge that to ignore the importance of community is to reject the learning all together. A connection to self, a connection to the land and its nature and elements, a connection to each other. 

This idea that human are somehow separate of ‘Nature’ is obscene and pompous. One saying of this subject that I have always find very affirming is of the sculpture Andy Goldsworthy “We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.” Perhaps this is the reason why artists have created works depicting or inspired by “Nature”, or people would seek places enveloped in “Nature” to re-established their peace. This then, should guide our steps walking through the everyday to think of ourselves being a part of the world and as Ernst Haeckel have said “Man is not above nature, but in nature.”

Alongside such agreement on nature I have been reading books on ancient civilisations and their uses of visual imagery that came through in hieroglyphs or rock paintings, as part of their continuous knowledge keeping and symbolic interpretations. Historic writings on Mesopotamia, greek myths and pagan beliefs were of starting points for such grand tales. Which led me to pose the question on why has it been so easy for me find these information, but I haven’t turned the mirror on myself and searched these realms in my own lineage. 

I grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Jakarta on the island of Jawa in Indonesia, a place that is always bustling and also rife with superstitious and strange perceptions of the esoteric, even though Indonesia is a muslim country. The deep roots of mysticism have gone back so long ago that it has been a part of ‘common sense’ in day to day living. Asking permisions to an old tree before resting under their shady canopies, rituals of acceptance from spirit dwellers before starting on construction, no whistling at night so that you don't attract unwanted invisible visitors. The past year I have been slowly reading books on ‘Kejawen’. In the english understanding would be that of ‘Javanism’, a system of belief that have gone way back when within the Javanese culture. It has aspects of traditional animistic tendencies as well as other religious understandings incorporated into it as the Island evolve with its' progressions over the century with Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. 

It has been really refreshing to learn something completely anew, even though these understanding have been around for a very long time though in the realm of otherness, even in Jawa. The connection to land is very important and is entrenched on every aspect of their rituals. 

Lately with my paintings I want to developed these studies further and take the time and space to collaborate on such findings. How can I visualise the red thread knotting from one purpose to another. The simple 'sketches' of acrylic have helped in braking down complex theories into tangible approach of landscape scenes that embodies myths, legends or esoteric insights. Renderings of what I feel is sometimes lost in the modern and present realities of today, the lack of connection and respect to places and history as well as other people. 

Nature and the Divine

Painting landscape have been an approach that I've taken for quite some time, manipulating them into abstracted forms standing by the melding of colours. Mostly based on an the amalgamation of my own archive of landscape pictures as well as the imaginarium, I try and create lines that would have been naturally created with a slow push here and slight tuck there.

Nature has always been an important subject within the arts, whether one is a creator of landscapes or not. The constant backdrop of the day to day have mostly been if not predominantly overrun by the vast natural world or the lack of it. Throughout the history of painting, nature have always been a part of most if not all important art movements; the ancient arts of hieroglyphs and cave arts as well as alchemical allegories to the middle ages. With the renaissance we are seeing depiction of realistic attempt of nature (amongst other subject matter) until it proved to be overrated and people started abstracting realities with impressionisms and then eventually, straight down to it, abstract art. As interesting as it may, looking at the linear timeline as art evolve alongside the intellectualism of our human and cultural understandings, they are constantly reacting to one another. Art has become a way to encapsulate our understanding of reality so much that at this moment in history, in a world where political discourse is at its highest state of subject matter and freedom with the help of instant access with the internet, political art has a way to move our emotions and way of thinking more than any other medium (portrait, minimalism, brutalism, abstract, etc.) could.

But I digress.

The importance of nature in our lives, whether or not we paint it, is absolute. We need them more than they need us and I have always find that the sense of being obsolete have never been more prevalent when we are in the middle of nature far, far way from everyone and everything else. I do believe this is why that we are able to connect with ourselves more, process experiences and work through them, seek enlightenment if you may so incline, best when we are in nature, within the landscape of wilderness, when we as human civilisation has worked so much in our evolution to control such chaos.

'The Divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand; there I represented it in the reeds.' Caspar David Friedrich in reference to his painting Swans in the Rushes (1819-20).

It is of no problem to agree that we can connect divinity or enlightenment within the freedom of nature. Most religious arts they would depicts scene of saints or prophets somewhere in nature, or events of catastrophe struck by the gods or goddesses within elemental disasters and even sublime contentment depicted in Monet's garden.

Over several years I have profoundly enjoyed my readings and research into mysticism, old religions, symbolisms and esoteric works. It has grounded my beliefs even further in my love of exploring landscape as a subject matter and that it has only just started for my practice. Since my art hiatus of over three years, it is such a pleasure to feel the excitement and curiosity alighted with each sessions no matter if it's panting on canvas or simple sketches with pencils, to pursuit the wedding of divinity and nature.