Czech-born artist discovers her calling in face of Buddha

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): She came here as an optometrist but will probably return home as a painter.

Maybe it is not that much of a contradiction between her past and present occupations. Czech-born Simone Willimann-Novotny claims that she continues to care for the eyes, except that it is the inner eye which interests her much more these days.

She fell head over heals in love with the Buddha about a decade ago -- today Willimann-Novotny has painted heads of the Amitabha, another name for the Buddha, that have been displayed at many exhibitions, including a current show being held at Hotel Borobodur in conjunction with its 27th anniversary.

During her travels, Willimann-Novotny noticed that the features and clothing of the Buddha change from Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Japan, China to Bali, but what all these cultures continue to have in common is the tradition of depicting the Buddha with the eyes closed. This excites her endlessly, as she tries in her paintings to imagine what lies beyond the lowered eyelids of the enlightened one.

It was the sylvan surroundings of Bali, where she lived in the early 1990s with her husband, who is in the hotel business, which moved her to look within and to express her innermost thoughts through painting.

"Living in Bali was truly magical to me," Willimann-Novotny told The Jakarta Post at her studio here, where she sat under the glow of the inner gaze of dozens of Buddhas from all over Asia.

Bali first transformed her as a human being. Her European upbringing had taught her to be punctual, efficient and successful. As a child she was told to take up studies that would help her to earn a decent living later in life. Bali changed all that. She learned to enjoy just being with people and to indulge in simple things like laughing together.

The island where she swears even the air is different, provided her with plenty of time to sit back and wonder what was it that she really wanted to do with her life? The luxury of being able to think about herself instilled in her a kind of peace of mind and filled her with happiness at the thought that she now had the choice to spend time in whatever way she liked.

She chose to attend workshops in art that were held under trees. She went on outings that led her to the strangest corners of Bali. She met weavers in a village tucked away in the mountains and watched artists like Sony and Anak Agung Abadi at work. She spent long hours in conversation about art and life with the likes of Kartika, a great painter herself and the daughter of the late Affandi, the greatest of all Indonesian painters.

With so much to inspire her it was just a matter of time before she plucked up the confidence and courage to start painting. Her first work is untitled but she constantly refers to it as "The Monks", and has decided that she will never part with it. After that she painted whatever she saw and with different mediums, but it was the numerous visits to temples that led her to become interested in icons. Eventually it was the calm and serene look of the Buddha that inspired her art the most.

It was a Buddha from Myanmar that flagged off her Buddha series and which was sold minutes after it was displayed at an exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. Saddened at being separated from her beloved Buddha she has since tried to replicate him, and he can be seen looking down from above her dining table through a charming frame made especially for him.

In fact, half of the magic of her Buddhas remain in the meticulous way she frames all her paintings. Her prayer for each of her Buddhas simply is that all of them get a good home where they are loved and respected in return for all the peace and harmony that they radiate around them.

Now that she is in Jakarta she has found time to study the various Buddhas at Borobodur temple, who at a glance look similar to each other but on close scrutiny are quite unique. She suspects that hundreds of different hands must have gone into creating each beautiful head. She was at Borobodur temple last October to visit the "stone knights on the mountain".

While there she watched each statue in black stone attain a life-like quality at the magical moment when the morning sun decided to spray its silver rays upon the gigantic temple. She returned intoxicated by the experience, but also inspired enough to paint some more.

Willimann-Novotny is speechless and her eyes brim over as the conversation turns to the recent destruction of centuries-old statues of Buddha on the stony cliffs of Bamiyan in Afghanistan. She has been distraught since she first heard about the tragedy; for her, the Buddha is more than religion. The Buddha is spirituality, a concept of beauty and joy forever that is not confined to any one national boundary.

Borobodur and Beyond is at Hotel Borobudur Jakarta, Jl. Lapangan Banteng Selatan (tel. 3805555) until April 7.