Ananya Pratap

The artwork which my piece is inspired from is ‘War and Peace’ by Hendra Gunawan. War and Peace is a painting that shows two soldiers crouched under a tree in the mountains. The painting uses cool colours and everything in the painting flows well together. Hendra Gunawan was an Indonesian painter who is widely regarded as one of the most important artists in the history of modern Indonesian art. He was born in Bandung, West Java, and began his career as a painter in the 1930s. He studied at the Bandung Institute of Technology, where he was trained in the Western tradition of painting, but he also drew inspiration from traditional Indonesian art forms. His paintings often feature bold colours and dynamic, energetic brushstrokes. In addition to his work as a painter, Gunawan was also a political activist. He was part of a group called the frontline painters; they sketched soldiers at work.

For my painting I wanted to create a scene which I saw when doing a trek called valley of flowers. At the time when I had started this project, I had just returned from the trek. In the painting I wanted to show a vast range on flowers on green mountains. I incorporated the number 13 my river, thirteen is my age, my birthday, and my lucky number so it was very fitting for it to be somewhere in the painting. I enjoyed everything about this process. I started with a few thumbnails to develop the composition of the painting. After that I sketched it onto my canvas and used texture paste to manipulate the surface. I then painted in the sky, mountains, river, and flowers with poster paint.