No businessman: Agni Ardi signs his Door canvas.

Agni Ardi arrived in Ubud 30 years ago, before the town even had electricity.

One of Ubud’s great artists, Ardi finds his paintings are scattered beyond the shores of Bali, selling in galleries in Scandinavia and Singapore and to private collectors in Taiwan, the US and Japan.

While he has traveled far with his artwork, his inspiration resides in Indonesia. Whether he’s fishing for a few days in Ahmed, visiting his daughters in his hometown in Banten, or occupying his second-floor flat in Ubud, Ardi finds inspiration in daily life. Inspiration could come from watching a woman carrying a basket or someone making an offering. He does not have to look far.

“I’m like a fisherman. Sometimes I make a good painting and sometimes I don’t. I don’t wait for inspiration, I just paint every day. I just paint what I have in front of me. Like fisherman, whether it’s the season or not they still have hope.”

His work is diverse. As a Taiwanese collector said of his exhibition in Taiwan, “This is the work of three artists.” He paints in mixed mediums including acrylic, oil and Chinese paint. Ardi makes some of his own brushes out of bamboo and credits his skill for detailed drawing to watching his grandmother make batik as he was growing up. While he prefers the abstract because people can make of it what they wish, he prefers to not be bound by concepts.

“In the process of my painting, I’m just a player of colors, lines, shape and space on my canvas and I keep playing from one beginning to another beginning as long as my art is fun for me,” he said.

Before becoming an artist and studying art theory and history at Essex Art College, Ardi began as a student of architecture at the Bandung Institute of Technology. When he told his mother he would shift and pursue art instead of architecture, she left him on his own.

“I went from being the golden boy in the house to being kicked out,” he said.

For 12 years, they did not speak and he received no financial support from his family, which happened to be quite wealthy.

Later, when Ardi had established himself as an artist, he and his mother spoke again. Before she died, she told Ardi about a conversation she had with his father before he passed away. His father said, “If our son pursues art, don’t spoil him because it will be really hard for him.” She honored her late husband’s words. Reflecting on what she did, Ardi said, “I think what she did was right.”

For Ardi, art is not about money, and never has been. He declined a hefty salary of Rp 200 million per month to work in Egypt because he knew he would not be happy living there for three years.

“I don’t want to buy your paintings, I want to buy you,” he recalls the collector’s words.

As tourism began to boom in Ubud, artists came not so much for inspiration, but for business and for Ardi, “that is not responsible.” He closed his gallery called Redspot on Jl. Dewi Sita because he found that business-driven artists were following his style and copying his work. The integrity of art divides lower art from higher art. He chose to go “into hiding,” as he says.

While, he spends stretches of time painting in Ubud, his paintings are stacked in his second-floor flat overlooking the rice fields, rather than shown in a local gallery. Some things, such as happiness, are just too important. When he’s not painting, he may be riding on his bicycle, trekking along a river, fishing or cooking. He smiles and says, “I’m just enjoying my life. I don’t want to be rich or famous, I just want to enjoy.”

For all his jokes about not being a businessman, one may think he missed out on success. But, that’s not the case.

Clients continue to find Ardi and commission him to paint artwork that will decorate hotel walls in Taiwan, or to design homes, which he has done for people in Bali, Sante Fe, New Mexico, and Oslo, Norway.

In January, Ardi will begin a project to paint the exterior of a catamaran for a Brazilian buyer who wants to give it to his son. At the prospect of painting an entire boat, he jokes that he hopes he will get to use the boat himself.

— Photo courtesy of Todd Teetzel


Contact Agni Ardi agniardi@hotmail.com

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