Nagano’s Eternal Life, watercolor on paper, employs juxtaposed images and overlapping shapes to present the multi-layered nature of reality.Courtesy Bamboo Gallery
Hawaiian-born painter Paul Nagano remembers perfectly the night he first arrived in Bali 20 years ago.
"I arrived in almost perfect darkness, there was little I could make out of Bali between the airport and Ubud," he noted in his text Bali and I. "When I woke in the morning, I found myself in a room in the middle of ricefields, looking out with delight at what I thought was a deer frolicking in them. I discovered later that it was a Balinese calf, looking for all the world like Bambi."
That statement and the event it tries to narrate perfectly capture the writer's honesty in admitting how little he knew about the island, known for its complex cultural heritage and astounding contemporary paradoxes.
Since that first visit, the painter, who got his BA in English Literature from Columbia College and received an art education from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, has returned to Bali almost every year. Over time, he slowly accumulated a portfolio of sketches, photographs and watercolors.
"With them has come a wealth of understanding and knowledge of Bali and the Balinese and their traditions as I evolved in my painting from an observer of landscapes, which continue to be irresistible subjects for me, to an interpreter of the mystery of Bali," he says.
That transition from observer to interpreter is the core theme of "Two Decades Nagano Watercolors of Bali", a current exhibition at the Bamboo gallery on the main road of Ubud. The works showcased in the exhibit are the visual records of the evolutionary process through which Nagano tried to comprehend the often perplexing cultural and natural tapestry of the island that has stolen his heart.
Jusuf Wanandi, Nagano's friend and a collector of more than 50 of his watercolors, says the evolutionary process has changed the painter.
"Before, he was a sort of pointillist-impressionist, and now he is a surrealist," Jusuf says. "He has been imbued with the Balinese spirit, with Balinese dreams, and with Balinese beliefs. It has been an exciting and a rewarding experience to see him change so drastically."
The change, Jusuf points out, is clearly evident in Nagano's works. From paintings about beautiful rice fields and temples, the island's exotic flora and fauna and the Balinese version of "Mooi Indie", he has arrived at creating paintings about offerings, spirits and the essence of human life and human beings in this world and in the spiritual world of the Balinese. His works have become an expression and appreciation of the essence of Bali and the Balinese.
"Others who are new to Bali and not well acquainted with this spiritual side of Bali find these paintings *strong' and *mystical'," Jusuf adds.
An art lover walking through the Bamboo display area will get a glimpse of the 20-year journey Nagano took in capturing that essence of Bali. Works from his early years are simple in nature.
They record the natural beauty of the island, the colorful rituals and the proud men and dedicated women who called themselves the Balinese. The compositions are basic and the colors are true to the physical reality that inspired the paintings.
His later works, the ones that reflect his effort to capture and present the essence of the island, are more complex, as juxtaposed images, intertwined figures, overlapping shades and larger-than-life colors work in unison to present Bali, which is made not of a single reality, but of layers upon layers of realities and consciousness.
"Simply put, he would not just paint the night as *there is the night'," says Daniel Komala, another avid collector of Nagano's works. "He would instead create the magic and the mystery of the night. It has not been easy but this is indeed a huge step forward."
Several of Nagano's works on display in the exhibit are currently in private collections.
In explaining the transition, Nagano cited his ongoing admiration for Matisse, particularly for the way that Matisse simplified his art.
"By the end of his career, Matisse had distilled the visible world into the most elemental of simple lines and shapes and colors," Nagano says.
"For me, it seems to have been an opposite journey. In the past seven or eight years my initial simple landscapes, first influenced by Impressionism and the poet painters of 18th century Japan, have became metaphysical and symbolic transformations which require the rich diversity of images that my two decades of painting in Bali have impressed upon me."
Twenty years after he set foot on the island on a night of almost perfect darkness, Nagano has arrived at that aesthetic stage where his works are no longer merely a visual recording of a physical reality but have became the rendition of a multilayered universe of seen and unseen realities.
"In short, I have moved from external to internal landscapes," he says. "The calf I saw with my eyes remains a calf, but in that alternate reality of my imagination it will forever be a deer."
Two Decades Nagano Watercolors of Bali
An exhibition of paintings by Paul Nagano
Until Sept. 5
Bamboo Gallery
Jalan Raya Ubud
Tel: 0361 970 733
Email: bamboobali@telkom.net
