Pemecutan, inventor of 'fingertip paintings'

Pemecutan, inventor of 'fingertip paintings'

By Alpha Savitri

KUTA, Bali (JP): Early 1967. Something happened that
exasperated Ngurah Gede Pemecutan. Later, this exasperation
became a point of departure from his career as an artist in the
country's fine arts arena. He is now widely known as the inventor
of a painting technique using fingertips.

It so happened that someone claiming to be a painter often
visited Ngurah Gede Pemecutan's studio in Kuta. He always arrived
with sketches and paintings that he claimed to be his own work.

The host was curious whether the guest was actually a painter
or an impostor. To satisfy his curiosity, he asked the guest to
paint a picture of Pura (temple) Prajapati at Kuta Beach. His
hunch was right. The visitor was no painter at all.

Knowing this, Pemecutan suddenly wanted to demonstrate his
painting ability before his guest. Unfortunately, he had already
lost control over his emotion, and also his concentration. It is
easy to guess that his painting was not as good as expected.

Then, he put down the brush. Deeply exasperated, he stirred
the paint on the pallet with the fingers of his right hand. Then
he let the paint-covered fingers touch and move over the canvas,
where he had painted the picture of Tari Baris (Baris dance),
which he thought was a failure.

Later, sitting down, he happened to observe this painting from
a distance. "I was surprised. The touch of the fingers, found all
over the canvas, generated a very good impact and effect of
colors," he reminisced.

This observation prompted him to finish the painting with the
technique of using fingertips. The result? A very satisfactory
and inspiring painting of Tari Baris.

This painting later inspired him to paint with his fingertips
and rarely use a brush. After experimenting he finally found a
painting technique using fingertips. Pemecutan, who hails from a
noble family in Pura Pemecutan, Denpasar, called his paintings
"Paintings of the Fingertips".

When observing his paintings, you will find yourself in a
universe with various heavenly objects in abundance. Then an
actual shape slowly emerges from the colorful dots spread all
over the canvas. Right before your eyes, a painting unfolds as a
three-dimensional picture.

At a glance, people might think that these dots are made after
the painting is completed. Brushes are absolutely discarded and
are used only when the painter provides a color base to the
canvas.

Pemecutan always colors the canvas first. "Otherwise, the
white canvas will always stand out. The colorful dots cannot
cover all the area, can they?"

After the right color has been applied to the canvas, make
sure that the paint is really dry. Then use a piece of chalk to
draw a sketch of your object; the paint-dipped tip of the middle
finger can follow the lines of this sketch.

When the paint is dry, the chalk sketch will be covered. Only
the dots remain. This sketch can then be given some color. Dark
and bright colors, applied side by side, will give a concave or
convex impression as well as the image of far and near and bright
or dark.

Apart from using contrasting colors, the painter can also use
pressure. If a finger is pressed hard, there will be deep dark
dots. If the pressure is light, the color will be light.

It is very obvious that sensitivity of feeling must be present
if one wishes to paint a good picture. The dots must be placed
correctly with one touch. The fingertip technique is quite
different from the use of a brush.

A brush will allow correction of a mistake. In the case of
fingertips, repetition will only make the painting dirty. "It
must be borne in mind that when one color must be covered with
another, the paint must first be really dry," said Pemecutan, a
father of two.

It is easy to imagine that a painting made with this technique
take months, or even over a year, to complete. His latest work,
Puput Badung (three meters by 1.5 meters), took 20 months to
complete. This painting is an imaginative prelude of how a war
broke out between troops of Badung kingdom and Dutch soldiers.

Pemecutan has, since inventing the fingertip technique, been
consistently using the fingertips of his right hand. From 1967 to
today, he has finished over 500 paintings.

Each of his works carries the date of when it was completed,
placed in one of the four corners of the canvas. Unlike ordinary
paintings, which are easily forged, the fingertip technique seems
to be forgery-proof.

Some 200 of his best paintings are displayed at his
Fingerprint Museum, Jl. Hayam Wuruk 175, Denpasar.

Pemecutan, born on July 4, 1936, said he did not hold special
promotions for his paintings. Most collectors of his paintings
are foreigners. "Foreigners like unique things. Most domestic
collectors are attracted only by painters at the peak of their
popularity. They have even bought paintings for investment," he
noted.

Born into a noble family of Puri Pemecutan, Denpasar,
Pemecutan completed his secondary studies in 1959. "I learned to
paint in my childhood but did not seriously engage myself in
painting until I had left senior high school. I failed the
entrance test for the School of Veterinary Medicine so devoted
myself to fine art," he reminisced.

Until 1963, Pemecutan used Chinese ink to paint his shadow
puppetry and traditional objects in black and white. Between 1963
and 1967, he began to adopt a modern painting technique and
painted on canvas, using oils.

His first choice was naturalism, followed by a period of
impressionism and then his own fingertip technique.

Pemecutan was awarded a Kerti Budaya certificate and a gold
medal from Badung regional administration in recognition of his
great merits in the fine art world. Four years later he received
a Dharma Kusuma Madia certificate and a silver medal from Bali's
governor.

In 1987 he received another certificate. This time from the
head of Werdi Budaya Cultural Park in Denpasar, Bali.