Painter Sonny Eska reflects on his world

Painter Sonny Eska reflects on his world

Mehru Jaffer, Contributor, Jakarta

His father is a Christian from Sumatra; his Muslim mother,
half Bugis and half Javanese.

But it is the ancient Hindu philosophy that inspires the
highly imaginative art work of Sonny Eska the most.

Different cultural influences enrich his life to this day --
despite the fact that the 47-year-old artist will not soon be on
any lists of naming the wealthiest men in the world.

"Every time my children ask me if I am rich I say to them,
very ... then they want me to show them my money, and I point to
all my paintings," smiled Sonny, adding that he is often nagged
by his children for not being able to buy a fancy car for the
family.

His parents had expected Sonny to take up architecture as a
profession. But, determined to paint, Sonny defied parental
orders, and picked up his brush and canvas soon after graduating
high school.

As a 19-year-old, he gave up all formal education and followed
the path of the flower-power generation and the hippy caravan of
the world to the sun-drenched beaches of Goa, India.

There, he made on-the-spot sketches and sold them to finance
his wanderings around the globe.

One day he walked into a room where an Indian philosopher was
giving a talk.

He remembers little else from that occasion except the
definition of Shakti (cosmic power) as being a combination of
creative intelligence and beauty. He has kept that in mind ever
since. From the Indian book of the Bhagavad Gita or the Song of
the Gods, he has learned never to waver from one's duty.

He is convinced that his only calling in life is to paint, and
thus throws himself into his work -- even though his mother still
disapproves. "It's difficult for her to accept the fact that I am
not an architect," Sonny said.

What disturbs Sonny is that more and more people are
scrambling for the most obvious things -- whether power or money.
"It makes me sick," he said, to think that human beings are even
prepared to destroy each other in the name of power and control.

He insisted that this is not what religion expects of
believers as he discussed the conflicts taking place in different
parts of Indonesia with a pained expression.

The tall man with an extremely wiry frame said he felt dwarfed
at the way all of life's mysteries and the concept of God has led
to such profanity and violence today.

Like all modernists, Sonny's art does not exult man alone, but
rather depicts existence as a fabric in which people, events and
things are intimately interrelated as a unified whole.

His role as a painter is not to make a realistic record like a
photographer, but to awaken his own perceptions.

When he expresses his concern for things like the rape of the
country's women or rich forestation and the ruining of the seas,
there are no obvious drawings of women, trees or fish, but rather
colors and shapes that speak to a language not heard before.

Sonny's paintings do not copy a particular event or scene.
They emanate a kind of spirit and momentum that forces the viewer
to look at the world through the eyes of the artist.

What is most striking in his work is the use of white paint.
Like the cosmos, Sonny's canvas seems to first receive the colors
of red, yellow, green, blue, violet, indigo and orange in the
unified form of white before radiating it back into the world in
all its variegated hues.

Standing before Sonny's art, it is possible to sense that
space is not static, that there is much more giving and taking
going on. In his latest work, done mostly in 2001, the primary
colors seem to crawl all over the canvas, creating a formless
effect that is rather mesmerizing.

Sonny doesn't use color only to make the grass green, or the
roses red, but also to imagine aspects of life that are beyond
description.

There is the trilogy where the colors used in each of the
three paintings are similar to the process of improvisation in
music when the very spirit of the art work seems to surface
towards the climax to acquire a life of its own.

Post-reformation Indonesia is painted by Sonny as a black
background with a yellow and black eye on a white square with a
torn top and a jagged bottom. The tears are blobs of black brush
strokes that run down the white from the yellow into a sea of
blue. In between are puddles of red and shades of a different
kind of yellow.

He was inspired to paint Scene of a Night Dream after one of
his friends was brutally injured during a street demonstration
against the regime in the mid 1990's.

Sonny was shocked at the police report that said his friend
limped because of polio, and not because of the blows of the
police batons that had rained so hard on him.

He said he is happy that the country is now free, but feels
that it has not changed for the better.

He describes the Indonesia of today as if it is a state
between dream and reality.

And to be able to enjoy Sonny's world, trapped in the throes
of a twilight zone, it is best to do so without comparing it to
one's own world.

Reflection of Life, an exhibition of paintings by Sonny Eska
remains open at The Lobby, Regent hotel, Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said
Kav. B-4, South Jakarta, till Feb. 13.