An Interview with Nino Yuniardi

WHY DOES SEATTLE artist Nino Yuniardi name his abstract paintings after foods? Watch this interview to hear his interesting answer. He’s also got a lot of fascinating things to say about the creative process.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, this is Adele and I’m here with another creativity interview with a fabulous artist I found. He lives in Seattle and his name is Nino Yuniardi. I’m going to let him pronounce his name, probably more correctly than I did. So hi, Nino and welcome.

Hi. Thank you, Adele, for having me here. It’s great to finally meet you in person. We found on Instagram, I guess, but yeah, I live in Seattle. My name is Nino Yuniardi and that’s how I pronounce it.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I’m glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Yeah. And I found you because I know Nick Wilton. We’re friends and he had a competition and you won. I fell in love with your work, even before I knew you won first place, but you won first place. So, tell us a little bit about that. Were you surprised?

It was a delightful surprise, honestly, because it was a little bit, almost like a blind audition in a way. You send your work without explaining who you are. It’s just the work. So, I almost didn’t apply.

Really?

Well, one more day that’s the last day, you put it in. So I put it in, but it was a really nice surprise. I couldn’t concentrate that day.

I’m sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I fell in love with your work for several reasons, and I look at a lot of artwork. Yours has a special quality that I’m not sure exactly. It has a depth to it, and I don’t know exactly how you get that depth, but it just grabbed me because I don’t know if it’s you work over dark or light or what have you. That’s one of the things. And then the joyful thing that you have where you title them around food, and that grabbed me right away as well. So, you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, because you like food?

I actually am not a big food person.

Oh, okay.

But the way you had it was… It felt whimsical and light and fun, and they were fabulous. So it really caught my attention.

Well, yeah. It’s interesting because I love eating and I love food, and actually the idea behind the food was it’s connected to people. I see different ingredients. I imagine the different ingredients equal different people and I tried to combine them together. Different people, different backgrounds…

Because, I hate when people make fun of other people just because they’re different. This happened to me a long time ago when I was a kid. I lived in a neighborhood where I looked different than other kids around the neighborhood. My school is fine, but in the neighborhood, whenever I go to school or back to school with my sister, the kids around there make fun of me all the time, just out of nothing. Just me look different, us look different. So, I think that’s when I got back to looking for the reason for my paintings. What is it that I want to do with my paintings?

So, I dig down with different things that I experienced and this thing kind of pops up to me, right? About being different, and it doesn’t feel good to me. So the paintings, I tried to combine the humanity of differences of people, the differences in ingredients. So it’s like the sadness into the fun-ness, the combining together. So that’s the idea behind this food title, because when I was a kid, I always go to paintings because of my feelings. Either I’m sad or happy, I go to paintings.

When I was, I think, ninth grade I started painting, learning about oils and water color and acrylics. And my parents always supported me. “Oh, you want acrylic? Here.” So whenever I have to deal with my feelings, I go to paint and that’s the whole reason for it. Nothing else. It’s just for me. It’s like a therapy, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I paint anything from scenery to flowers, anything. I like Salvador Dali when I was a kid, because he can create his own world. So I was fascinated by his work.

So my early work has that tone. It’s really subdued in a way, a lot of brown… And sometimes people look at it and think, “Why is your painting so sad?” A long time ago, you know? But that’s how I started. And lately the Melting Pot series, that’s when I started… I think about three, two years ago, maybe I started that series. That’s when I dig deeper why I paint. And that’s why I have to go back to that and just look at it and internalizing it and putting it on the canvas. So, yeah. So far I’m having fun working on it.

Yeah, I’m curious. Talking about the emotions of it… Do you have an emotion first before you get started with the painting? Or do you kind of just start and then an emotion comes and you ride with that? Or what…

When I start a series, maybe the emotion comes first. I go to paint because of something, right? Something happened or things that bothers me, I go, just start painting. But then after you have a couple of series, then your head’s going to know, “Okay. We’ll just work something like that,” and continue the series, right?

So, you have the concept already in your head so you don’t have to go back to that feeling all the time, you know? Because especially when you go to a series, say, I want to create a paintings based on cancer or something like that. It’s pretty heavy. I had one of the series based on that and I can’t go through that all the time. I have to kind of break away, even though the outcome of that is a happy painting, like really vibrant colors. But I don’t want to go back through that again and again. It’s just a couple of series and that’s it. Move on to different things or twist it in different ways.

That’s really cool, yeah. Because I noticed you have several different series and Hope is the one with…

I actually was an art therapist and worked with cancer patients using art as therapy and it really was fabulous. I loved it. And it wasn’t sad, it added so much to their life. It was a sense of expression, so I can kind of understand how it might seem dark at first and then there’s some light that comes from it.

Okay, okay. No, no, that’s great. I don’t have cancer, and maybe that’s part of the thing that’s different than a person who has cancer. It’s almost like my work is part of my prayer to them. So maybe that’s the heaviness that comes in because I don’t know what that means. I can only imagine and it felt heavy, so that’s great from a different perspective.

Now we have three of your paintings here that you brought and are these from the same series? Are they from a different series? Because they all look so joyful and I love the way you… I see an elegant simplicity to them. That’s the best way I can describe it because there’s a lot going on, and yet there you pull it together with this simplicity of going over some of the colors. So I don’t know if you want to talk about each one? Or…

Well, this one I would imagine… That’s the newer one. These two are new. I would think it’s going to be a new series. You were the first one to know.

Yay, is there a name for the new series?

I don’t know yet, but I’m scratching. I think maybe I’m going to call it Leftovers. I don’t know. It’s based on the first…

Okay, you heard it first! You heard it first!

I know, they heard it first too!

It’s leftovers based on food as well, because this is a part of the Melting Pot series. This one is part of it. And to continue as in of that, I always want to find a way to simplify it even more, just restrain myself. I told myself not to put a lot of stuff in there and it’s harder, you know? It’s easier just to keep adding, adding… Which what I’ve done, is added, and then covering it up too, right? This one’s a little bit different where I kind of have to…

This small one or this big one?

Both of them, yeah. Plan ahead a little bit, a little bit… Like, I think I want more of a geometric shape in there instead of organic, or maybe both. In this series, the Melting Pot, it is more like let’s activate the canvas, go for it, play, play, play, and then we will see where it goes which is great too. I like doing both.

So yeah, I think it’s just a continuation of… It’s almost like this, “Oh, I know all these tricks. I do all this stuff and cover it up.” Next step is more thoughtful or more deliberate of what move I want to do. Right? So giving it more white space… It’s almost like the word leftovers is more like the level four of the plate. It’s clean, but it’s also messy, so it’s still food.

Well, that whole concept… When you talk about that, I immediately have an image to go by. Just like we went out to breakfast this morning and I’m going to look at my plate at the end of finishing in a whole different way now.

Yeah, yeah. I think there’s a movie where somebody takes pictures of all the leftovers. They just take pictures of only the leftovers.

That’s so cool. That’s so cool. And I have to agree with you. I haven’t done a minimal series yet. It is much harder, I think. It’s much easier for me to put things on and then edit and subtract than to do ones like this. That’s why I respect so much how you’ve done it. And I do notice that you put black in almost… Not this one, right? But you put black in almost every one, I noticed that. Is that something you do consciously or is it unconscious?

Yeah, I think it’s just the way to add contrast to the whole thing. Almost ground the whole thing down. I did notice that yesterday when I look at all the series, the new one, I will have this black thing on them. Do I want that? So still in process. Maybe it’s not black black. It’s a different color but it’s dark.

It’s a dark value.

Dark value of whatever the color palette in the canvas… So work in progress.

I love that. Okay, let’s see. The medium. I just have a couple of questions. I think we’ve gone through a couple of them. What medium do you use?

I use mostly acrylic, and then I use dry pastels.

The soft pastels?

The soft pastels.

Not the oil, but the soft.

No, the soft pastels. That way I can smudge it in smooth. I think that’s part of what makes it have some depth to it. You have this smudge almost like a shadow, right? And then contrast that with this sharp line. Contrasting, that kind of makes things interesting. But other than that it’s mostly acrylic. I use either wood for the small one and then canvas for the big one.

Yeah, and looking, I love also… I don’t know if this is a recent series or an older one, but you have a series of paper where you use recycled things. And I love that. I looked through all the ones that you had and I thought they were just fantastic.

Yeah, yeah. That’s another part of the experiment of things. As an artist, you try the different things, you know? So one of them, just trying to figure out what to do with all this trash. I’ll have receipt. I save travel receipts in the bag so the studio is getting full with all of that stuff. I’ve been wanting to do some working on watercolor paper. So that’s the reason watercolor paper…. And again, still, the idea of playing with the medium. This cutting it up, paint, scrape it… It’s all about playing on that one.

And are they small? I don’t know what size are, they’re not large.

Yeah, it’s 12 x 12.

12 x 12. And how do you mount those? Do you frame those?

I don’t frame it. I have 8 x 8 blocks behind it and you just put tape on it. So when you put it on the wall, it pops up, right? So it looks like a sculpture a little bit.

I love that. I love that.

But you just have to be careful because it’s paper, it’s exposed so that’s one way to mount it. You can put it also in the shadow box. That will be nice. That’s a good exercise.

That’s on my list to do because I have all these things that we put in the recycle bins and I’m dying to just take some time to just kind of put everything out and “What can I do with these?Tear some and put them all together.” So, then it’s fun.

Yeah.

All right, let’s see. Oh, we talked about your series. Now you have the Melting Pot we talked about, and the Hope, and the paper ones. Now, what about Flow? You have a series called Flow.

Yeah, the Flow is more about me and my family, we used to go to the beach a lot. So that’s how I connect myself with my dad, and my mom, and my sister. I used to have mild asthma when I was a kid and one of the cure was to go to the beach and get fresh air. So that’s just one of the ways to reconnect to back home because all of my family is still back home in Jakarta.

In Jakarta.

Yeah, I’m originally from Jakarta. My sister and my parents are still there. My sister is also a fashion designer.

So creativity runs in your family.

Some. So she’s doing some clothing design, at the same time baking. She likes to bake and she has a small restaurant.

So food runs in your family too?

Food and art. What else?

I think that’s awesome.

Yeah, but that series is pretty short, I think. It’s not a lot of series in there. I think that’s one of the fun things about art, I guess. You experiment with one series and another series… I’m looking at it as like creating a music album. You create this album, and then the next one, and then the next one… But you just have to create something new. Hopefully they’re connecting, but don’t have to.

Right, I love that idea.

Some artists from country music go to pop or vice versa.

And when you have a career… I’ve had a career for like 30, 40 years and there are different stages that you go through and it’s like, “I’m not doing that stage anymore. I’m onto something totally different.” So yeah, it’s wonderful to see the progression of how we work as artists over the years.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like I’m still, I don’t know, elementary, I guess. As far as fine art goes, I’m learning about just looking at art in general, understanding them when you go to the museum. I still sometimes scratch my head. “Well, why are you doing that?” or “what does that mean?” Sometimes I realize, well, maybe you don’t have to ask those questions. It’s just like jazz music. You listen, don’t ask questions. You just enjoy it and how it feels to you. That’s it and that’s enough. I mean in the past, I’ve tried to understand the reason for everything. Sometimes I guess it’s good to have reasons.

Yeah. And just to enjoy it, like the color combinations or whatever. I love that idea, to just enjoy it. Don’t look for something more. It’s just pleasurable.

Yeah, exactly.

Makes you feel happy. Yours make me feel really happy, I have to say. I love them, I’m really enjoying them.

Thank you.

Now, let’s see. We went through those… Oh, two more things. Your process. Do you have a certain process? Like you start each one… I know that you said with this new series that you have to think about it more before you start it. Do you draw on a sketchbook and think about the composition? How does that work?

I have a sketchbook, but I think I never thought about it as part of the linear process. It’s just things that I do and becomes part of your back of your mind. When I realized the drawing behind all of these, I just realized I sketch those in my sketchbook. But when I did it, I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, I sketched that before.” No, I didn’t know. It’s just part of the thing that you do becomes a process anyway.

But the process of activating the canvas, like the Melting Pot series, I still like those. I think it makes me less stressed, because you just want to go to the studio to play. You don’t have pressure about, “Oh, it has to look like a certain way.” Because that was stressing me out before. You have to create something. Now it’s less about that. It’s more about, just make something and see what happens. I think that’s the biggest thing I learned from Nick. He teaches about being present in the studio without giving you a lot of pressure because it’s a long game. You just keep doing it, keep doing it, without getting burned out. That’s the biggest thing I got from it, I think.

That’s a great thing to know, and even for people who are beginners. I have a lot of people in my Art with Adele membership and I said, “You’re going to do hundreds of paintings, hundreds. Don’t get too caught up in the one. Enjoy the process. Play.” And that’s one of the things that I love that you said is that, you go and you just play and you don’t have stress around it. You just see what happens, see what shows up and see what the next thing is that it’s going to tell you to do.

Exactly, yeah. Even if there’s a deadline, you kind of think, “Okay, there’s the deadline. It’s December.” Well, you have to start playing early then.

Exactly, exactly.

At the end, you don’t know what’s going to happen with the piece because you have to give it a lot more runway so you can develop it and finish it. Because the process of this… You play about a couple of times, but then you have to start thinking about tidying it up. Composition, the value, the contrast… Sometimes if you do that too early, you get stressed out.

Totally agree. I keep telling my students, I said, “Just play. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think. Until the end. Then you can put a little thinking in.” And even then don’t think too much because your intuition. It’ll shut down your whole creative process.

Yeah, yeah. That’s great.

Well, I have one more question, which I ask everyone in the interview, and that is how would you define creativity?

Hmm. Okay. I think it depends on the context. Well, to me, creativity is an interest that’s so high that you want to figure it out. To me, that’s the creativity. So everybody to me is creative. Not just artists, engineers… Everybody is creative. Even Ellen, because they have interest to do something. So I think creative is an outcome of passion or interest because you’re so interested in doing something, you become creative. It’s a big C versus a small C. To me, small C is like artists. Some people say you’re creative, it means you can draw. That’s different to me. That’s just you can draw. And if somebody said I’m not creative, I think in the context of artists, I think to me, they’re just saying, I can’t draw.

“Oh, your kids are creative.” Well, maybe, but the reason they’re creative, because maybe they draw a lot. You can be creative, to me, if you have interest in being creative. You can figure it out. If you put that in the context of drawing, yes, you can be good at drawing, but you just have to practice to make it good, to have that title of you are creating.

So I don’t think I’m creative. I think people saw me, “Oh, it looks so easy.” Well yeah, because I’ve been doing it for a while. Look at my portfolio a long time ago, you don’t want to call me creative. It started with the seeds of interest. So when I draw in the beginning a long time ago, it made me happy, right? I’m sad, and then I draw. That make me happy. So my interest is how do I make myself happy again? So I draw again. Then slowly I get that title of “you are creative”. Well, because I’ve been doing it. So, to me, that’s creativity. I think it’s because you have interest in something and you become creative. You figure it out.

Figure it out. A good friend of mine, Michael Dickter who we interviewed, who’s an artist he thinks… which reminds me of what you said, “Figure it out.” He said, it’s like problem solving.

Yeah, exactly.

Which is an interesting way to think of creativity… A lot of people think you’re kind of born with this thing, that you’re either creative or you’re not.

Right, I don’t believe that at all. I mean sure, some people have magic ability. Say basketball player who can jump like Michael Jordan… You can jump that high, but the reason he can jump that high because he also practice. But at the same time, sure. You have taller and bigger hands. Sure, that helps. But then he’s not going to be that star if he’s not leaning into the creative part, the talent or what do you call it, right? You don’t water it. If you don’t water it, they don’t grow.

I love that, I love that.

Yeah, that’s great.

Well, that’s pretty much all I have. Is there anything else you haven’t covered that you’d like to cover or want to add?

No, I think that’s good.

So your website is nino.studio.com.

No. .Studio. There’s no .com on them.

Oh, okay.

Nino.studio

Nino.studio. Okay. So if anybody is interested in these fabulous paintings and want to learn more about Nino, go there.

Ask questions, I’m happy to answer any tricks or I can forward you to your website.

Well, thank you so much for coming. I know it was a trek coming over to Bainbridge island, but thank you, thank you. I love meeting you. I love seeing your work in person. I really love this and I hope more people will get to know you.

Great. Well, thank you for the invitation. This is great.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Yay.