I began to draw comics, sketches, superheroes cartoons, and caricatures in 1980’s. Then, painting on canvas in 1990’s as a hobby. In 2000’s I became a pro, I made paintings for living. My first and the most important painting teacher is my mother, Liane Lampe Widagdo, and then Pak Wahyu and my SMP school teacher, Pak Norman.
In my early years, I made realistic paintings but lately, I prefer abstracts. The only reason is because abstracts paintings has more words, far beyond imagination, can say many things that words & mouth cannot.
As a universal language, I believe paintings has a very important role.
Paintings as a universal language
has sharper words
cuts deeper than the sharpest swords
Talks louder, means deeper,
reaches wider, echoes longer
for a polite & peaceful protesting
entertaining and also misleading
from Ungaran, Indonesia, I shout
with a mouth with no proud
stop bombing with explosives,
stop shooting and taking lives
so let’s just take your canvas
close your ears, move your brush
Here comes the painting volcanoes
angry with the dark skies
Don’t wait for another woes
burry down all those lies
because lines never really straight
as your eye sight
and colors always teasing minds
even for the blinds
(Moses Foresto, September 2010)
I believe that every painter, and every artist as well, must be budened by a big responsibility to express social conditions or cultural disease with a beautiful prophetic words of line and colors. We also have to express the beauty of nature and reminds everyone’s responsibility to keep our nature beautiful forever.
If we do not, that will be embarrassing. We’d better hide, put our face behind a wooden mask!
In every painting that I created, I always try hard to express the spirit as the main driving motivation to be projected on canvas. As a quote says:
“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.” – Leonardo da Vinci
It is why that every single painting creation needs full concentration, sacfifice and pure mind. Without those condition, I believe, the artwork is useless. Without full concentration, the resuls will be just a dirty crowded chaos; no sacrifice means no values, and without a pure state of mind, the artwork would be visualized as a words of lie. Such conditions happens frequently to me!
For me, the best artwork is those made with a faithful heart, warm soul and pure mind, and the most difficult process in painting is to reach such condition before painting, along the creation process and how to keep that way after finishing.
From my ship, Ungaran, Indonesia, September 2010.