User:Rifaiindra/sandbox

Laila Airlie Dempster

I was born into a Diplomatic family with a long artistic tradition. My first studies in art were made in Barcelona, Spain, with the great Spanish master Alfredo Sisquella, from the original Barcelona group of artists in which Picasso was the most famous member. Sisquella used to delight in sketching me and would play games around the art of painting to amuse me, so unawares, I absorbed the basic Old Master’s techniques from my earliest days. At the age of 11, studying at the British Council in Singapore, my life drawings were almost as developed as they are today, and at 17, I attended the St. Martin’s School of Art in London. This meant that, trained in two great schools of portrait painting, the Spanish and the English, I have worked primarily as a portraitist all over the world, though now, established since 1971 in Jakarta, my work, aside from portraits, also expresses my love for Indonesia, its people, traditions, and landscapes. At 18, I started receiving commissions for portraits, and at 23, I attended the Byam Shaw School of art in London. When in England I exhibit at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and now as a result of extensive travels, my work is to be found in collections, some important, all over the world. 1971. I arrived in Indonesia and worked continuously painting portraits, 1977. I left Indonesia for 5 years abroad and in 1983 I returned and picked up where I had left off, participating in some important international exhibitions until 1993 when I held my first one- man show at the British Council opened by the British Ambassador, followed by solo exhibitions in 1997, 2001 ,2002, 2003, 2004, 2006. Now my present project is for a major exhibition of new work done in Central Java.