Olivia Gordon
The inspiration for my painting was War and Peace by Indonesian revolutionary Hendra Gunawan (1918-1983), who was a guerrilla fighter and activist in the Indonesian war against their Dutch colonists. Gunawan, and a group of other artists on the frontline took inspiration (and sketches) from what they saw there, and then made large landscapes based on it once further away from the no-man-lands. I learnt Gunawan had a tumultuous life, from fighting in the war, to year in prison, and spent a great deal of time creating magnificent paintings, with rich colours when he could, often aiming to incorporate both the hardship and anguish he saw as well as serenity and peace into his work. In Gunawan's paintings, he rarely uses skin tones, usually using shades of blues, green and browns to represent different ethnicities.
One of the parts of 'War and Peace' I particularly enjoy is the contrast, on one side of the painting, we have a calm mountain scene, made up of swirling blues and green whilst the other side is made up mostly of spilling dark colours, such as sooty blackish blues and muddy dark brown. I also notice how the character with a bright blue/green face is on the darker side of the painting, whilst the dirty, duller-coloured, armed figure is closer to the purer, more vibrant landscape.
The story I used as inspiration for my own painting is based in Bangkok. When I lived there, a few years ago, mostly during covid, I was living near Khlong Toei Slums. Being surrounded by downtrodden, poverty-stricken people, even personally knowing and laughing with them, I noticed how so many of them were living hand-to-mouth, never really knowing when their next full meal would come and having no access to education, absolutely living in a dark cloud, like the one behind the blue-skinned figure in 'War and Peace'. However, what stood out more to me was how they found bright spots wherever they could and preferred to live hard-working but happy. I saw this a lot in the way they leaned on each other, and had a impenetrable sense of community and belonging to the way they made their own tiny gardens or set up great bustling markets overflowing with vegetation and items of cultural importance. It often reminded me of new shoots struggling up through the earth to blossom into magnificent trees. I found this was symbolised in the comradeship of the figures in the painting as well as the trees standing tall not far from the mud and gloom.
The reason I chose 1,0,0,0,0,0 as my numbers was to symbolise the 100,000 people living in 1mile² of the slums.
The decisions I made regarding the composition all relate in some way to the Khlong toei slums. I centred the large Thai demon as the main part of the painting to symbolise everything that drags the Thai people down, all the corruption, poverty and restriction. The garish sky symbolises both the limited help they receive from the outside world as well as how not even the sky is in their favour.
The numbers surrounding the demon represent the 100,000 living in the slums, and the way they are both trapped and tied to their suffering, as well as their unfaltering loyalty to their country, religion and culture. I wanted to have the numbers in rows close to the demon but still spaced out, partly to prevent clustering in my painting, but also to represent the still defined independence of the Thai people. In multiple contexts. The way the green/blue backwash doesn't quite reach the edges of the paintings symbolises the solidarity of the slums, and how separated it is from anything better than what they have now.
I manipulated my painting to represent what I wanted in many ways. From the three different painting styles (sponging, rough and out of line and smooth wavy lines) to the decision to paint the outlines of the numbers to show the way the effect the Thai people have is on the world around them, not necessarily on themselves as an individual but on the world around them. By having the colour spread out onto the wash behind it, I hoped to make the numbers more noticeable, even next to the huge demon figure. I also outline them in red to partly match the outlining background, which is bright red. This is a reminder that the green is a self-made small sanctuary in the midst of a corrupt and dangerous environment.