Sri Yunnah, Kuncana continue painting, despite old age

Sri Yunnah, Kuncana continue painting, despite old age

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post/Yogyakarta

Getting older does not mean you have to stop working. Artists Sri Yunnah, 64, and her husband, A.Y. Kuncana, 70, are proof of this. Despite their age, they still paint and are very productive, each producing up to two paintings -- on mostly medium and large canvases -- a month.

"We could paint up to four paintings a month when we were young," said Kuncana on the sidelines of a discussion held in conjunction with a painting exhibition he and his wife are jointly hold at the Pitoe Gallery on Jl. Prawirotaman in Yogyakarta until Aug. 15.

Titled Harmoni dan Sejoli (Harmony and a Couple), the two-week exhibition features 24 paintings by Kuncana and Sri Yunnah, both graduates of the Indonesian College of Fine Arts in Yogyakarta. Nine of the paintings exhibited are by Kuncana and mostly depict the country's social and political life. The other 15 paintings were done by Sri Yunnah and capture scenes from daily life such as traditional markets, moments of family life or landscapes.

"This is our first exhibition since our last joint painting exhibition we held in Kuala Lumpur in 1987," said Sri Yunnah, adding that they found it difficult to get together enough paintings to exhibit because of their decreasing productivity and the increasing number of collectors who wanted to buy their works.

"Actually we want to hold a joint exhibition in Jakarta but we don't have a sufficient number of paintings to exhibit. We need at least 40 to 50 paintings to exhibit there. We do not have that many," said Kuncana, whose paintings are among the collection of the Indonesian Museum of Fine Arts.

Sri Yunnah's paintings are no less popular. She said many of her paintings were in the collections of the Indonesian Museum of Fine Arts, the Adam Malik Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, the State Palace in Jakarta and many private collectors, both in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Among the private collectors in Jakarta who have purchased her works, she said, were members of the extended family of former president Soeharto.

"People know me better in Jakarta than here in Yogyakarta, where I've lived for nearly 40 years," said the Semarang-born Sri Yunnah, adding that this might have something to do with the fact that she debuted as an artist in Jakarta and held most of her early exhibition there.

Before moving to Yogyakarta and settling down on Jl. Sawit, Semaki Gede, where they still live, the then newlyweds Kuncana and Sri Yunnah -- they were married in 1962 -- lived in Tanjung Bungkah, Denpasar, Bali. Kuncana, who was a civil servant, was assigned to teach at a private high school there.

The only stayed in Bali until 1965, when Kuncana gave up teaching and the couple moved to Yogyakarta to dedicate themselves to their art. But life was not easy, especially because Sri Yunnah was just realizing how difficult it was at the time to be a woman and to be recognized as an artist.

She was deeply disappointed that none of her paintings she jointly exhibited in Surabaya in 1963 with Kuncana were sold, while almost all of her husband's paintings were bought up by collectors.

"What hurt me the most was that it was not a matter of good or bad paintings. It was just because I was a woman that people didn't want to notice my paintings. They didn't even want to have a look at them, much less to buy them," Sri Yunnah said.

So upset was Sri Yunnah at the time that she considered giving up art. However, Kuncana kept motivating and encouraging her, giving her the courage to create something different and noticeable in her paintings.

After numerous experiments, using Bali's pictorial-decorative traditional painting style as inspiration, and adding modern coloring, improving the anatomy of the figures and most of all adding texture, she came to what she calls a completely different look for her paintings.

"I found the texture so amazing. It made the paintings vivid on the surface of the canvas," Sri Yunnah said.

Still, she said, the texture was just a tool to give her paintings a different look, and was not the reason she painted. Painting for her was still a matter of expression. It was the beautiful expression that mattered, not the texture. That is why she is annoyed when people refer to her paintings more as works of craftsmanship than works of art.

"Both are completely different. A work of craftsmanship can be duplicated repeatedly, made by mass production. A work of art cannot. It is one of a kind. It is unique. My paintings definitely cannot be repeatedly duplicated. They cannot be made by mass production, especially the texture. No one does it like I do," Sri Yunnah said.

The first solo exhibition she held for her textured paintings was in 1975 at the Banowati Gallery on Jl. Semarang in Jakarta, some 12 years after that frustrating exhibition in Surabaya. Some 35 of her paintings were exhibited in Jakarta, and 30 were sold. Her second solo exhibition at the same gallery in 1979 was a similar success, and Sri Yunnah never again considered giving up painting.

In 1980, at the invitation of Lingkar Mitra Budaya, Sri Yunnah and Kuncana held a joint exhibition at the organization's building on Jl. Tanjung in Jakarta.

Only this time, the joint exhibition was a moment of pride. She felt comfortable seeing her paintings, the work of a woman, placed equally alongside those of her husband.

"The trauma that had been haunting me since the 1963 exhibition was completely gone," she said, adding that the fact that numerous collectors wanted her paintings and the countless invitations she received to hold joint exhibitions abroad further convinced her that she had chosen the correct path.

Drawing on her own experiences, in 1985, together with three other women artists -- Sri Robustina, Yuriah Tanzil and Dewaretno -- Sri Yunnah established the Association of Indonesian Women Artists in Jakarta. That same year in Yogyakarta, with the wives of noted artists (the late) Bagong Kussudiarja, (the late) Widayat and Djoko Pekik, she established the Association of Wives of Yogyakarta Fine Artists.