Eye Of God Painting

‘Eye Of God’, 1996 Watercolor on paper Size: 48.5cm x 41.5cm The Balinese myth of ‘Truna Tua and the Sky Nymph’ provided the inspiration for this painting in watercolors. One the most popular stories among Ubud traditional painters, this myth gives them an opportunity to depict the nude female in a respectable traditional context. An old bachelor could not get any woman to marry him. He comes upon a pool in the forest where a group of sky nymphs has descended to bath. Knowing the nymphs cannot fly naked back to the sky, he steals the clothes of one of them and forces her to agree to marry him before giving back her clothing. This was painted while taking inspiration from the rich tropical flora and fauna all around in the garden of the homestay where I was staying as a guest at the time. Here Truna Tua magically transforms from an old man into a handsome athletic young man who leaps out of the trees from above, toward the Sky Nymph who is unaware. The collection of anthropomorphic forms and beings that appear at that dramatic moment are recalled from various cultures beyond and including Bali. The human frog, right side of foreground frequently appears in traditional Balinese art. The yellow, human caricature faced snake above and left of the Sky Nymph seems to have turned up from nowhere. A delicate labia or vulva hovering in the space below appears as an apparition, while the white veins inside the leaves resemble the ghosts of humans dancing. Meanwhile, on the extreme right with hooked beak and claws distended a large bird of pray flies into the scene, bringing with it the threat of male violence while an all-seeing Mexican ‘Eye of God’ hovers at the center, between Truna Tua and his sensuously vulnerable soon to be wife. I drew out the entire scene in pale gray watercolor with fine tipped brushes first. Colors were added later. Nothing was planned or plotted first in pencil. This was surrealism taking place in the grand old style blended with the Balinese Batuaan approach: automatism, improvisation, pinpoint precision, exactness, finality and the principle of elaboration.