Nicola Cook

The painting that I reinvented was War and Peace, created by Hendra Gunawan in the 1950s. Hendra Gunawan was born on the 11th on June 1918 and died in the year of 1983. During his younger years, Hendra was a part of Persagi, The Association of Indonesian Painters, it was an organisation founded by S. Soedjojono and Agnus Djaya in the year of 1938.

I enjoyed re-creating this particular painting because part of it is based on war and my great grandfather fought in WW2. I also enjoyed painting this because I find mountain ranges to be very peaceful. I chose the number 9 for my re-creation painting because that is the amount of family members I have (not including myself). For my re-creation I decided I was going to stick with the theme of the painting‘s background and added a sunset. For the mountain range, I used used cardboard and layered it on top of each other to make it more 3D. I took the same approach on the clouds and used texture paste instead of regular paint. For my number, I decided to be creative and make it a bomb to show the war part of the painting.

The story that my painting tells is very similar to the original painting ‘War and Peace’ which is a very relevant part to me, it also has a lot of nature in it which I also find very relevant to my piece. I think the main message of my re-creation and the original artwork has a lot to do with the circle of life in a more ‘man-made way’ as opposed to the war part.