Quilt painting, an alternstive art

Quilt painting, an alternstive art

Dewi Santoso, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

For a beginner like Ratna, the idea of doing a watercolor or oil
painting can be daunting.

So the 36-year-old decided to go to a workshop on quilt
painting that she thought would be interesting.

"I cannot paint. I have never done any watercolors or oil
paintings. I can paint batik, though. I thought quilt painting
might be interesting because unlike the usual kinds of painting,
it uses solid form," said the mother of two.

Ratna has taken batik classes before at the Textile Museum on
Jl. KS Tubun in Central Jakarta.

Sponsored by the museum, the one-day workshop on quilt
painting was held on Dec. 22.

With a fee of Rp 100,000 (US$10.86), the one-day workshop was
divided into three classes, with each class lasting 90 minutes. A
total of 25 participants attended the workshop.

Another participant, 29-year-old Agus Priyono, said he was at
the workshop because he liked to try new things.

"I can do batik design and I thought I wanted to try something
new, just to see how it was," said Agus, who won a batik design
competition earlier this year.

Quilt painting is more than just a few pieces of cloth and a
good imagination to Didit Susanto, a master of the art.

"I saw some artists doing quilt painting when I was still a
kid. I started to do quilt painting in 1970, after I had worked
up the courage to try my hand at it. I started doing it
intensively in 1988," said Didit, a retired civil servant.

As he learned to master the necessary skills, he discovered
that quilt painting was more difficult and more exciting than oil
painting.

"Unlike oil painting, in quilt painting you cannot play with
gradation as all of the colors on the quilt are absolute. I find
quilt painting more challenging because one needs to be creative
enough to play with the absolute colors. That's what makes quilt
painting exciting," said the 52-year-old artist, who learned
quilt painting on his own.

He said quilt painting was not popular because few people knew
about the art.

"That's why I was very pleased that the Textile Museum asked
me to hold a one-day workshop on quilt painting," he told The
Jakarta Post.

Didit expressed pleasure that so many people were interested
in the workshop.

"I'm glad that the participants are taking it seriously
because many people still regard quilt painting as a handicraft
rather than an art. And that's what I want to change," said
Didit.