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Conserving nature through paintings
Paulo Alves (JP/Syamsul Huda M
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Paulo Alves (JP/Syamsul Huda M.Suhari) (JP/Syamsul Huda M.Suhari)
Paulo Alves (JP/Syamsul Huda M.Suhari)
He was skillfully maneuvering his paintbrush on a canvas with one hand, while his other held a palette with a variety of different color paints.
Paulo Alves kept adding stroke after stroke, in alternating gentle and strong contours. His head shook now and again to the sound of music accompanying a traditional dance.
The 24-year-old artist was demonstrating his skills to a crowd of Gorontalo Mall visitors in Gorontalo city on Aug. 23. His painting session was in collaboration with a local traditional dance troupe to enliven the occasion.
The event was part of the celebration of 'Hulonthalo Lipu'u: Gorontalo My Native Land of 1001 Birds' held by Burung Indonesia, an environmental organization that focuses on the conservation of wild bird habitats in Indonesia.
A bird picture-coloring contest and an exhibition of bird photographs were the other attractions of this program. Gorontalo is home to diverse bird species. At certain times of the year, the province in the upper reaches of Sulawesi is visited by migratory birds from various countries.
This year, Burung Indonesia has recorded 142 bird species found in the natural habitat of Gorontalo, 32 of which are migratory.
These facts made Paulo obsessed with visiting Indonesia, an archipelagic country home to more than 1,600 bird species. The dream of the Portuguese artist was finally realized this year, when he set off for Asia.
Guided by Burung Indonesia, Paulo toured several regions in the country. In Halmahera, North Maluku, he painted pictures of, among others, ivory-breasted pittasand white cockatoos, which are native to the island.
While in Gorontalo, Paulo spent three weeks in August exploring the forests and hamlets in Pohuwato, the province's westernmost regency that borders Central Sulawesi.
During his visit to Gorontalo, Paulo also found several species native to Sulawesi, such as the Sulawesi knobbed hornbill and Sulawesi eagle.
A male (above) and female Halmahera angel (Semioptera wallacii). (Illustration by Paulo Alves )
He managed to sketch at least seven bird species there. When describing his work process, Paulo explained that he first observed a bird he planned to paint with binoculars, and then made a rough drawing of its body and outlines, and finally added the finer details and color to each part of the bird with the help of books.
According to Paulo, trying to capture the essence of a bird in a painting is a tricky business, as most birds suddenly move or fly away if they are approached. But this challenge, he said, was what made his work so interesting, adding that his interest in bird painting had come about by accident.
As a child, he was one of many people who hunted birds with traps to eat. In Portugal, the practice is commonplace and legal. He frequently joined his father to hunt birds, when one day he happened to come across a book on bird watching. He started to question what he was doing, as he became aware of how some bird species were endangered due to hunting.
'Birds are a small piece of the world puzzle that we should conserve for the continuity of human existence,' said the artist, whose full name is Paulo Alexandre Marques Alves.
As a boy, Paulo asked his mother to buy him a pair of binoculars, which he paid for out of his own allowance and from then on, he began to spend hours watching birds and drawing them.
To improve his artistic skills, which he had first exhibited at the age of three, Paulo studied painting techniques in Italy.
Paulo says he does not know how many birds he has painted; possibly hundreds. But his special talent has taken him to Britain, Brazil, Morocco, Spain and Switzerland.
In his own country, Paulo has had his work displayed at several galleries, all in the hope of conveying his message about the importance of nature conservation.
Paulo has not only painted birds, however. His illustrations of wolves, for instance, appeared in Portugal's National Geographic magazine in its April 2013 edition.
In Indonesia, his paintings can be found in a series of four postage stamps. One shows the mandar gendang, a shy bird that is difficult to spot, which is found only on Halmahera Island. The three other birds in the series are the Siau scops-owl, the Flores eagle and the Sangihe sunbird.
The series, entitled 'Endangered Birds of Indonesia', was issued in 2012 under collaboration between Burung Indonesia, the Forestry Ministry, the Communications and Information Ministry and the state postal service, PT Pos Indonesia.
The four bird species are endangered and, as such, are on the red list issued by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).
During his visit to Indonesia, Paulo said he had discovered more than 50 indigenous bird species in one of the Wallace regions that he wanted to paint. This particular region, defined by British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, covers Sulawesi, Maluku and Nusa Tenggara.
'I would like to paint as many of the birds native to this region as possible,' he said, adding that he hoped to visit Flores in East Nusa Tenggara to observe the birds on the island.
According to Burung Indonesia executive director Agus Budi Utomo, the Wallace zone ' with its thousands of islands situated between Oriental and Australasia regions ' has at least 697 sedentary and migratory birds, 252 species of which are indigenous, far more than in any other part of the country.
However, Agus explained that the survival of many of Indonesia's bird species was under serious threat, due primarily to the high rate of deforestation. Of the 1,600 species in Indonesia, 126 are listed as endangered.
