Adeline Kurniawan

When I went to the National Gallery, the oil canvas artwork 'Forest Fire' by Raden Saleh (1811-1880), inspired my artwork. Raden Saleh (1811-1880) was an Indonesian artist from Java known for his Orientalist paintings that are filled with energy as well as emotion. In the 19th century, Raden Saleh was one of the most important artists from Java.  The Forest Fire (1849) is hailed as a “father of modern Indonesian painting”. This tragic tale of life and death is narrated powerfully through the vivid depictions of the animals and the dramatic use of colour and light and dark on a monumental scale. The artist had mentioned that he was conflicted with what style he should draw this painting as he is Asian but to get the message across it has to be drawn in a European way which is causing him a lot of conflict with his culture. Forrest Fire is filled with energy and wild animals such as tigers chased by flames to an edge of a precipice. This piece of artwork reminded me of how chaotic my brain was as it was always filled with such strong emotions and energy and rapid thoughts which never stopped,  that was just too much to show with facial expressions and even words to describe. It also reminded me of my passion for dogs. It was an interest so strong and obsessive. My mind was fixated on that topic and I could talk about dogs for hours on end, 4-5 hours straight and not even realise that the person is bored, frustrated or annoyed. This inspired my artwork - Choas in the Brain.

I first added yellow paint for the background. Then I used red/orangey paint and diluted it in water to make the flames and smoke. This is meant to symbolise chaos, energy, being overwhelmed, as well as burnout from too much sensory input, sensory overload, from the outside. It also somewhat represents confusion and anxiety. I drew the brain shape using a pencil and then used pink paint to paint on top of it. Using blue paint, I diluted it with water to make a green/blue surface on the painting to symbolise some calmness when doing the things I enjoy or when I do certain repetitive movements which reduces the stress, which is soothing. I used string and glue to stick strings on my artwork for it to stick out and symbolise confusion, rapid thoughts and even more chaos. I then used red and a lot of white to create a light pink and diluted it to paint on top of the shape and made some bits darker by adding more red or even black to create texture to the brain. I drew dogs around the brain with a black marker to symbolise my passion for dogs. The dogs are all drawn differently from size, coat texture, body shape, etc.

I chose number 10 and cut it out with a paper knife to cut a stencil for my artwork to represent the age of when my passion/obsessive interest started.