Imagine you are a journalist, you are in Yogyakarta, and you are assigned to interview Bob "Sick" without knowing who he is or where he lives. This is what you do: You go to an art gallery or a tattoo studio and mention his name to anyone there.

The first or second person you talk to is bound to be able to give you information on where you can find him or, better yet, give you his phone number. And the response you could expect from that person is either, "Oh, the artist," or, "the guy with the tattoo-congested body." Yes, that is how well-known he is there -- at least to those in the art or tattoo business.

That morning, Bob Sick was feeling ill. He had only slightly recovered from fatigue when he walked out of his bedroom and sat in the unfurnished living room of his rented house in Sewon, Bantul, Yogyakarta.

"I just came back from my painting exhibitions in Semarang and Jakarta, and I haven't been feeling so hot since then," Bob said in a weak tone, exerting a faint smile that turned the straight lines of the whisker-like tattoos on his cheeks into curves. The two exhibitions he mentioned turned out to be great successes, with all of his paintings sold out in Semarang.

Born in Yogyakarta on May 26, 1971, Bob "Sick" Yudhita Agung has done over forty solo and group art exhibitions in Java, Singapore and Australia. He has also done various talk shows and seminars on tattoos, body painting and body piercing, and has graced the covers of a number of books and magazines.

"My look is a good means of promotion in the art world," he said jokingly, "but I never thought of my tattoos as a commodity. I just love getting tattoos so much."

The story of these tattoos goes all the way back to his last days in senior high-school, which he described as tedious.

"My first two tattoos were the dragon -- the symbol of peace of mind -- and Asterix, from Asterix and Obelix," he said.

Claiming the first tattoos were his way of trying to look different -- or, as his personal website says, to look macho -- it is a little ironic knowing they were stabbed onto hidden areas of his upper arms. "I didn't want the family to get all worked up, you know."

But the family did get worked up the first time they got a glimpse of those tattoos, telling him that people would be quick to make negative assumptions.

Bob's wife, Titin Widiasih, 20, gave an exaggerated example of such an assumption. "I saw him for the first time in 2006, and at that moment I thought, does this guy eat people?" Widi, who does not have any tattoos, said with a big laugh.

She added, "Then I got to know Bob better and it turned out that he is a nice person. Annoying when drunk, but mostly sweet. Clingy, even."

Nowadays Bob, who is also known as the President of Tattoos, only has space enough on his body to add small decorations around the hundreds of tattoos he has -- in his own words -- "collected."

"The last design is Spongebob, here on my butt," he said, later pointing out the ones he did himself. "I prefer to have my friends work on my body. The ones I did myself are messy."

People with more than one tattoo would respond differently if they were asked which part hurts the most when that pigment is punctured into their skin.

"Wait till you get one around your eye. You'll cry," said Bob.

To him, however, pain, both psychological and physical, is a significant element that persistently guards the evolution of his creations; a concept that he has continuously explored throughout his journey as an artist; a key word that he has taken from his life experience and has tried to capture and convey through his paintings; a universe that he finally compressed into a simple word that has ever since become a household name: Sick.

"Pain," Bob observed, "is bliss."

But what was the evolution of Bob's creative process like?

"When I was still in high school, I participated in many drawing and painting competitions. I knew the field really well, meaning that I knew what the judges were looking for, that I always won. So I decided to be a painter and make a living out of it." Graduating from senior high-school, Bob enrolled into the Indonesian Institute of Arts in 1991, where he began a journey of descent into self-destruction.

Bob shares the story of how he fell into the trap of alcoholism and drug addiction on his website www.geocities.com/infobobsick, hoping that others will not make the same mistake. He says that as soon as he found success with his earlier primitive-na*ve paintings, he completely lost the desire to create or study. He did not try to recover until the year 2000.

After divorcing his first wife and seeing that some of his contemporaries had become national icons in fine art, he decided he was too young to be wasting his life.

"I regained that need to paint, pouring everything that was inside me onto canvas after canvas, although it wasn't as easy back then as it is now since I couldn't get everything I needed whenever I wanted to. But, if you ask me which of my paintings I like best, I'd say the old ones. The challenges contributed a stronger feel to them," he said.

Now Bob can say that he can have a pint and no longer feels the addiction. "And I can paint whenever I want to."

"There was this one time when he finished ten paintings in one day," Widi added.

Anything else that has changed? "Money has changed a number of things. We bought a house and will be moving there soon, and I am getting used to going to the bank to pay the bills. But in some ways, it has also threatened my creative works. It's dangerous when you're painting and numbers pop up in your mind."

"But, we're also going to have a baby," Widi said beaming, "I'm five months pregnant now, yet we've come up with a name: Bintang (star). I'm thinking of having a star design tattooed on my body after the baby's born."

Popular

RI, Australia strengthen partnership on taxing crypto assets

Analysis: Indonesia denies normalization with Israel to enter OECD

Citroen to produce electric cars in Indonesia