Naivete liberates the paintings of Erica Hestu Wahyuni

Naivete liberates the paintings of Erica Hestu Wahyuni

By R. Fadjri

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Children's sketches and drawings, whether put
down in disorderly strokes or in sweeps of merry colors, have an
honesty of infinite dimensions in the leaps of fantasy they make
on canvass or paper. Personality and intellectual development at
an early age liberates children from expressing themselves in
sophisticated ways. Simple strokes to build simple forms and the
use of basic colors denote a plain line of thinking. On the other
hand, a child's dream world may emerge in the fantasies arising
from colors and forms.

Children's drawings are a response to their surroundings. The
child's empirical and psychological world should hone his or her
instincts to play around in the world he or she knows, or even in
totally strange environments. It is how they learn to know their
environment, or learn to communicate within their environment.
This phenomenon in children does not differ from those of
artistic adults. The only difference is that adults put the
experimental and psychological world in a more complex frame. The
result? Creative expressions arising from complex minds.

Erica Hestu Wahyuni is no exception. She deploys a childlike
technique as a deliberate choice of expression. Her solo
exhibition to be held at Purna Budaya building, Yogyakarta,
from Sept. 21 to Sept. 27, has added to the number of painters to
this naive genre. A few names include Eddie Hara, Herry Dono and
Faizal. The expressions of childlike images on canvasses of these
painters were inspired by simplicity, merriment, the dream world
and the playful spirit of children.

However, the childlikeness in the works of adults is a
fabrication, the result of complex engineering of various
elements.

However, it looks as if Erica has decided to follow her own
path. The mother of one, she has no intention of letting
adulthood or her education at the Arts Department of the
Indonesian Art Institute in Yogyakarta, engineer her childlike
image into a complex creation.

Erica's works appear more as paintings of children in an
optimum processing stage of development than that of the works of
an adult exploring childlike images. The source of Erica's ideas
are closely connected with her family and environment. Her
romantic relationship with her own self, her child and her
husband, is repeated in her association with a TV set, a jar, a
cupboard or a painting.

Inanimate things come to life in her paintings, diffusing a
warmth or arousing a wave of emotion. Here the things are no
longer merely objects. They have become objects with strong,
private and emotional connections for Erica.

We are reminded of how children treat their kin or everyday
objects. We have heard a child talk to his or her bear or toy
car, as if these objects have a soul of their own. The items are
transformed into close friends.

Erica's family is her world, which is an infinite source for
her works. Erica has experienced numerous incidents in her daily
life as a housewife, all happening within the restrictions of her
garden fence in Yogyakarta. Her work Watching Television (1992)
was inspired when the family sat together in front of the TV. Her
painting Home Sweet Home I (1993), is of her husband watching TV
while her child kept her company. Home Sweet Home II (1993),
depicts her busy in the kitchen and watching the TV at the same
time while her child whined for something.

Fly To The Gold Space (1993) shows a flying man carrying a
child and a woman on his back. There is also a painting showing a
couple and a small child on TV as another female of more generous
proportions appears to scrutinize fragments spread over the
canvass through squinting eyes. This narrative of happiness and
pleasant family life might be a fragment of Erica's own
experience, or a psychological part of reality.

All her paintings are done with simple lines in prime colors,
possibly obtained from a felt tipped marker or crayons. We do not
meet shade mixtures in Erica's paintings.

The naive style in modern art was started by the late
Soedjojono, an authority on modern painting in Indonesia who
endeavored to preserve the Indonesian character in the art of
Indonesian painting.

Soedjojono's advice to young painters at the time was to paint
as someone who had never painted before, or to draw as a child
whose expressions are still uncluttered and pure. The purity
typical of children could be the medium by which genuine purity
in the Indonesian painting art may be reached.

Nearly all the special traits found in children's drawings are
present in Erica's paintings. For instance, painted objects are
made transparent, showing the inside of the house and all its
contents. Her paintings may also take the space concept, for
instance, where the nearest item is placed at the bottom part of
the painting, and objects further away are found in the upper
regions of the work. Aside from this, plain forms in Erica's
paintings resemble the efforts of a child, rather than a deformed
model made by adult hands.

This is the difference between Erica's works and those of
other artists who follow the naive style as a form of expression.
It was not at all surprising that Erica's works were chosen as a
therapy for mentally handicapped children at the Bergen Institute
in Schoorl, the Netherlands.

Erica's approach is like a strong emotional display refusing
to let go of the romantic period of her childhood. It tells of
life lived in honesty, a simple life colored with beautiful
dreams. It is life which should rightly be owned by toddlers,
though people have the right to mind them and possess them to the
best of their ability.

Erica's childhood may have been a simple one, as simple as a
child's expression. In adulthood, however, it is this childhood
that casts a richness over all her paintings.