John Martono

John Martono’s swirling abstracts with a mix of painting and hand embroidery on silk certainly brings a new and different perspective within Indonesia’s contemporary fine arts. The combination of textile science, embroidery, and painting on silk that requires a special technique becomes John’s trademark for self-expression. Known mostly as a textile designer and with his years of experience as a textile lecturer as well as a degree in Magister of Design from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), it is amazing to see how John’s brilliant mind are able to concoct in combining all these elements together to create beautiful artworks.

In John’s own words of his artworks: “The Journey of Happiness” is a realization of a process that after all this time concepting and working in fine arts that in and on itself is its own happiness. Throughout the various situations that accompany this creative process I personally calls it as happiness in every details. Situation in the form of individual feelings becomes a stimulus in a work that is born with the intensity of process from time to time. A situation that exist outside of my experience become one of my responsive thinking spaces so that I also have to distance myself from all these events in order to get sufficient points of reflection. In essence, thinking about appearance in an imaginative context is the search for knowledge on a broad horizon.

Please enjoy my artworks and know that you are a part of the happiness of these works.