Artist Spotlight: Rensi Ardinta on Symbolic Expression of Melancholia

Saint of Bravery by Rensi Ardinta

Pulling inspiration from her personal experiences and observation of the natural environment, Indonesian visual artist Rensi Ardinta creates her digital world of melancholia with flowing lines and a distinctive vivid palette of purple, pink and blue. We talked to Rensi about the process behind her digital creation.

Rensi’s Saint of Bravery is shown as part of the ongoing group exhibition Electric Psychedelia at Vellum LA, curated by Ellie Pritts. Artwork is available for bidding on SuperRare here.

The vivid and deep hues of purples, pinks, and blues stand out your pieces. What influenced your choice of color palette?

I wanted to create a contrast between my delicate figures and the vivid colors. I think it’s a way of shouting for me, since I’m not too outspoken in real life.

Eyes are a recurring element in your art, is this intentional for a recurring theme in your work?

The eyes are representation of insecurity.  Having this feeling of being watched and judged all the time by society. 

Some of your pieces mix biotic and digital elements together, how do you approach combining these two opposing components in each piece?

It’s a depiction of hope that somehow we can always find the balance between nature and technology.  I like using something contradicting in my work, it shows how the universe works to achieve balance. 

A feminine figure makes a frequent appearance in your work, would you consider womanhood to be a significant influence for your art? 

I was raised in a quite matriarchal family, so the sense of strong womanhood definitely seeps deep into my subconscious. 

Accompanying each piece is a poetic description, are your pieces inspired from your writing or do the words come after?

Usually it starts with the main idea of a narration.  Sometimes I already have the keywords for the poem and then followed with the artwork, after which I compose the poem.

Your environments contain various components of nature, can you explain your process for creating each background in your artwork? 

I use symbols to emphasize my narration and each of them have certain meaning that completes the story. Elements of nature, flower or insect, were sensible choices to enhance melancholy and delicate ambience that I tried to create in every piece. 

Each piece feels so vulnerable and sentimental, do you draw upon you own emotions when creating each piece?

Every piece that I made was triggered by a certain emotion that’s been happening at the moment, or can be something from the past.  It’s more like an scattered emotional journal I guess. :)

Photographs by @docu_la, @djkero