Keep the spirit alive, says painter
By Susi Andrini
YOGYAKARTA (JP): The skin may be wrinkled and the body tired, but the spirit must be kept alive. The saying goes that the older one gets, the better one becomes. That is an apt description of Kustiyah, 64, who is exhibiting her works at Bentara Budaya in Yogyakarta from Aug. 26 to Sept. 2.
Despite her poor health, Kustiyah has kept up her spirit to show her existence as a painter. Like most artists, she wishes to work continuously and to give solo exhibitions. For the exhibition, she selected 40 paintings from her work, which dates back to 1957. Kustiyah's body of work is not extraordinarily large due to her asthma and other illnesses.
"I prefer to paint out in nature, especially on the coast. The sea wind is good for curing asthma," she says.
Kustiyah does not like to be limited by rooms and walls while painting. She believes in liberation in the process of her work. "I do not set limitations for my paintings," she says.
This is reflected in all her impressionistic brushstrokes of panoramas, flowers, animals and humans. Painting nature is a physiotherapy she has created for herself. It is a cathartic process that allows her to reach ecstasy -- a situation beyond one's consciousness.
On the way to that stage, Kustiyah abandons all thought and inspiration to reach spiritual enlightenment. This enlightenment is the struggle and spirit she taps from herself. Nature is the inspiration for her work; it is as free as her thoughts while she applies brush to canvas. Kustiyah traveled with Kartika -- the daughter of the late maestro Affandi -- to Bali for one week in 1968. There Kustiyah managed to abandon herself to her painting, producing seven works.
Some of the titles of these paintings -- the way to the temple, Sanggah (house shrine), preparations for ngaben (cremation) or Seruni flowers -- testify to the experience of painting in Bali. "If I were to paint these at home, I am not sure that I would have finished so many works in one week," says Kustiyah, who is allergic to dust and the smell of oil paint.
Sometimes she produces only one painting a year because of her asthma. An oxygen bottle is always nearby in her home in case of an asthma attack. She has also suffered a stroke and had a tumor in her large intestine in 1986. She thought she would not live much longer.
During these difficult times, Kustiyah gained new energy to paint. She wanted to paint some final works before her death and present them to her children. Yet, she overcame these medical adversities to continue painting today.
Kustiyah's paintings show sharp curves and lines with cool colors, a testimony to her strong will and soft-heart. These qualities can be seen in her self-portraits from 1957, 1962, 1967 and 1979, as well as Kampung Karawuni from 1960 and 1979's Pesisir di Madura I (The Coast at Madura I).
Her love for painting was apparent when she was still in grade school. "My task as a child was to sweep the whole yard, which was planted with jeruk Bali (Bali orange) trees. When the ground was swept, I drew on it with the thorns of the oranges," she says.
Kustiyah, who is married to well-known sculptor Edhi Sunarso -- he constructed the Selamat Datang (Welcome) statue in Jakarta, was born in Probolinggo, East Java, on Sept. 2, 1935. She did not inherit her talent for painting. Her father Notowisastro was a bank employee and her mother a housewife.
She remembers that when she was in junior high school, her mathematics teacher Ali Suparto caught her sketching while he was teaching. He reprimanded her and took away the sketches, and she is pleased to know that her teacher has kept those sketches all these years.
On the advice of her eldest brother, Kustiyah on finishing high school in 1953 went to Yogyakarta to continue her studies at the Indonesian Arts Academy, now called the Indonesia Arts Institute. She was the only woman among some 60 students.
At the time the painting materials were very simple and had to be made by the students themselves. The raw material to make canvasses came from Padalarang paper covered with certain chemicals. The students were often taken out of the classroom to paint. Sometimes they went to the mountains, the coast and the market. According to Kustiyah, painting out of doors tests one's ability to study objects, to feel the vibrations of the universe and to understand the surrounding realities, including humans with their joys and sorrows.
Her favorite teachers, including Hendra Gunawan and Affandi, taught her a lot about the spirit and mentality a person needs to become an artist who does not easily lose hope and refuses to give up. From another teacher, Trubus S., Kustiyah learned to understand and paint human figures, and Rusli taught her to comprehend nature and the universe.
Love and an inextinguishable spirit emanate from Kustiyah like an aura. Kustiyah as a wife, mother of four and grandmother of nine, has shown herself to be a painter engaged in a struggle to create new works. It is this energy that remains in the autumn of her life that pushes her to hold a solo exhibition as the realization of her existence as an artist and a painter.