Desert, Bandung

"I cannot remember ever having decided to become a painter, even less having chosen that above anything else. I only know that there was a certainty that led me, simply and naturally, a certainty which I received with gratitude. Maybe this process felt natural because I was born in a family and in an environment that supported it. For example, my grandmother had a batik studio, father had a printing press and a weaving workshop besides cultivating oranges, etc. while my great grandfather was a writer of the Holy Book (Ketab Suci), a calligrapher who used a kalam on parchment and whose products I admired highly. In short, my childhood environment was one that always paid attention to colours, form, comparing and evaluating what was suitable or not - maybe what is called 'aesthetic judgement'. " (Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit, and Mountain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1994, p. 71).