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.