Despite having done quite a number of interesting sketches, I have not done any batik painting in the last four years or for that matter, painting of any kind. Any inspiration is long overdue.
The last batik painting was commissioned by a wealthy housewife. It was an imaginative painting of her fetching water from a river using two ‘labu’ containers made from the dried rind of gourd, the fleshy fruit of a climb plant, featuring her as a young woman dressed in a typical Iban ‘kain’, tied up to her waist just enough to cover her modesty but is topless. It now adds vibrance and exoticism to her flashy bungalow just opposite a new shopping mall in the city, here.
While being in the Brunei sultanate between 1997 and 2012 I did a good number of pieces in both Kuala Belait and Bandar Seri Begawan, selling over 20 pieces during APEC 2000. Now those pices, including those sold during my 1974 one-man show in Sibu, are kept in the homes of collectors in countries such as UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, India, the Philippines, South Korea, Australia, Brunei and Malaysia.
During the heyday of the 70s, particularly during my course at the Fine Arts Faculty in the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), painting was both a passion and obsession. My painting using canvas, using emulsion paint or oil, especially the studio exercises and assignments, most of my earlier paintings were influenced by Post Impressionism and Surrealism. But later it was Conceptualism that took centre stage and to some extent, Futurism, thanks to the late Prof. Redza Piyadasa, the piooner of Conceptualism in Malaysia who was then my Sculpture lecturer. Surrealist Salvador Dali (1904-1989) had a great influence on me, especially on works accomplished by emulsion paints. His painting The Burning Giraffe (1937) is among his more interesting pieces as does La Pesca del Atun (1966) and The Galatea of the Spheres (or its Spanish version Galatea de las esferas) completed in 1952. All are showing his personal struggles against the world which related to mine in those days. This empathy had caused such influence. Dali’s 1944 piece The Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee is probably his most interesting work that rivals his contraversial Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) done in 1936. These works have made Dali both a surrealist and futurist in artistic terms and art world. When I was active in painting, especially using oil and emulsion, Dali was in his early 70s and the twilight of his life.
His paintings, however, do not have much impact on my batik pieces. When I do batik, I am thinking more of their realistic effect and understanding of the viewers, thereby putting more emphasis on their attractions to buyers/collectors who incline more towards realism rather than abstraction.
After doing a lot of paintings on canvas and experimenting with oil and emulsion, I had to make some real adjustments and initially there I tried some paintings effecting exploratory expressionistic modes as well as the surreal or realistic depictions of objects and subjects, some time referred to as ‘images’ in the art world. These trends stayed for a while but in the 90s I rediscovered that viewers preferred realism to abstract expressionism.
Some people may ask ‘What exactly is batik?’ The Encyclopaedia Brittanica defines it as a colouring method whereby wax encloses the patterned area so that the other colours cannot permeate or infiltrate. This method is mainly used on cotton material using primary colours such as blue, yellow and red. But when mixed these primary colours become secondary colours of green, brown, purple and others. I prefer just the primary colours plus black and white for a bright effect.
Traditional batik designers would understand batik as a fabric on which coloured patterns are born, starting with the plain white cloth to which wax has been applied in order to bring out the patterns (that would remain white until the end) and afterwards dipped (in colour mix) or drawn to bring out certain colours.
This same principle is applied during the course of doing batik painting. Perhaps the only difference a batik painting has from ordinary batik pattern or design is that batik painting depicts a scenery, story or message by means of its motifs, figures, shapes, colours, lines, patterns, brush strokes and other artistic attributes belonging to the art surface or picture space.
What characterises batik painting from other paintings is the use of cloth, dyes and wax. By this, the painting is distinguished from others by its ‘cracks’, referring to the cracked patterns effected by applying thick wax on the cloth surface after all the colours are done. After the application, this hardened surface will be cracked to arrive at a pattern where any dark colour of black, red, green or blue, is again applied. This colour will permeate the cracks and stay there as permanent cracks and patterns, giving the painting a batik identity and character.
It was in 1970 while being in Form Three that I first learned batik painting under the tutelage of our teacher Stephen Teo, a wellknown Sarawak batik exponent. In 1971, our new teacher Joshua Jalie Linggong, took over the reign of the Batik Club of Saratok Secondary School in Saratok. At that time I was very much inspired by the promise of an exhibition. Jalie, my distant cousin, who years later became my colleague in Rajang Teachers College, Bintangor, kept us his promise and brought us to Kuching for an exhibition at the British Council Hall. This 1971 group exhibition was the first of any exhibition for most of us. Two of us later, namely yours truly and Mulok Saban, respectively became the state’s first and second fine arts graduates from any Malaysian varsity. Sadly, both of us did not get to share our batik painting expertise with school students. Mulok taught in a secondary school just for a while before moving to the State Printing Office, heading it as the director when it was privatised to become Percetakan Nasional in the 90s. In my own case, upon graduation I was posted to a teachers training college straight away and taught education subjects such as Philosophy and Psychology of Education. I only taught Arts Education for a few months before being transferred to secondary school on promotion. One teachers college, five secondary schools at the top management level, two private colleges and all the major media in town in all within almost 40 years just left me with two pieces of batik left that I have no intention to part with, and not sharing the skill with a soul. This inability to do so is probably the quandary of most artists. I say kudos to Joshua Jali and Stephen Teo and other art teachers who have shared with a good number of Saratok students their batik skill and expertise. My dream to hold another one-man batik show has not materialised yet. In my heart such flame is still burning but the limbs and eyes are not so compliant. As they say, age is just a number.
My advice to other artists is to keep painting, especially those portraying youthful images. You would find this could help to check on the ageing process. Or the alternative is to keep on admiring Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
