Sriyanto's diversity shows in gallery

By Mehru Jahfer

JAKARTA (JP): It is hard to neatly characterize Sriyanto for the man escapes any definition. He looks neither like a banker nor a painter, but he is both.

He studied law but has worked for nearly three decades at a bank. He has been painting for 40 years but without ever attending art school.

Most of his work on display at a newly opened gallery named after him in Pondok Indah, South Jakarta's upscale neighborhood, differs so much in style from each other, it is as if they were conceived by more than one painter.

And instead of being annoyed when this is pointed out to him, the soft-spoken Sriyanto smiles, saying that it is the subject matter that counts and not so much the style.

The result is that he has tried his hand at every medium and technique available to a painter from simple sketching and watercolors to complex themes explored in oil. His idea is to break free from all shackles and to leave that ever sizzling energy of creativity within him forever loose.

Even to this day he keeps his mind blank each time he stands before a naked canvas and lets the moment decide what is to be painted next.

"I am a slave to my moods," says Sriyanto, whose book with 117 reproductions titled Srijanto, Painting, Drawing and Sketches is to be released soon.

From very early in life Sriyanto has had to struggle with his silently simmering creativity, confined within the formality of a typical Javanese home.

Perhaps he even felt a trifle stifled when he agreed to go to law school instead of art school to please his parents. "Like an obedient Javanese son I caved in and made sure that I practiced a more respectable profession than that of a painter," he recalls, adding that all his life he has tried his best to find that balance between profession and passion and spirituality and reality.

Now at the tail end of his career at the bank, Sriyanto feels grateful for his long life experience in the material world, which taught him to use his time in a disciplined way and allowed him to take good care of his family.

His wife, who is from West Sumatra, only helped him keep his feet planted firmly on the ground. Her more down-to-earth attitude toward life egged him to perform his job as a banker to the best of his ability and to paint for the rest of his waking hours.

The result is that at the age of 62 years, Sriyanto is a man at peace with himself, one who considers himself fortunate to have tasted the pleasures of both the real and the imaginary worlds.

In a year or two when he retires from his job, he looks forward to painting from dawn to dawn at home and at the studio above the art gallery. When asked what the price of one of his paintings was he replied that the value of art was far more important to him than the price. "You will have to ask the price from the director of the gallery. I really have no idea," he said.

Although he is not a professional painter in the formal sense of the word, this has never prevented the art world from recognizing him as a great talent. He has been a member of the Indonesian Watercolor Society and participated in traveling exhibitions to different corners of Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States.

A lucrative job also allowed him several opportunities to travel extensively and he used his time to visit museums and exhibitions around the world and to study the great masters.

He could afford the best books on art and spent hours teaching himself to draw. Rembrandt, the greatest artist of the Dutch school in the 17th century, that master of light and shadow, impresses him tremendously and has influenced a great many of his landscapes.

Sriyanto has tried many experiments with low-key colors highlighted by a spot of strong light, just like Rembrandt.

He has tried his hand at the mesmerizing technique of one of England's finest landscape artists, Joseph Mallord William Turner, who uses both high color and bright light and is from the mid-19th century as well.

At home Sriyanto is very inspired by the works of Zaini, Srihadi and Popo Iskandar; all of whom have helped him to translate color into an expression of his own romantic feelings.