Artist Dali Susanto has achieved his goal of having an exhibition at the Hastings City Art Gallery. Photo / Warren Buckland
Indonesian-born Hastings artist Dali Susanto has achieved his goal of exhibiting at the Hastings City Art Gallery.
Dali grew up in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in an artistic family.
His parents created Indonesian batik art - an Indonesian technique of applying wax to cloth in patterns and dyeing the cloth - and owned a gallery.
Hoping one of their four children would be an artist, they named him after Salvador Dali.
As a child, he started doing batik and painting.
"When I was growing up, I can see this pattern around in my mind and now I can let it out.
"I'm just so happy that I grew up with that," he says.
He moved to Hawke's Bay in 2007, picking apples and working in a supermarket before art became a full-time job in the past couple of years.
In Indonesia, Dali created art but says he wasn't doing it as seriously as he does in Hawke's Bay because "in Indonesia everyone is an artist".
Here, he has found that the community here "support art really strongly" and "people more appreciate it".
In 2014 he had his first exhibition at the Hastings community art gallery, but displaying art in a large gallery has always been a goal.
"I love to do this big-boy gallery, that's like my goal and this time I get it."
Through his work, he wants to "spread the good word" and "positive vibes", and includes positive messages in his artwork.
Titled "Today is the Day", the small room of immersive work aims to help people to focus on the present and "be nice".
His piece at the gallery includes messages such as "I love Hawke's Bay", "Don't forget to smile", and "I love unicorns" - something his daughter says.
He worked for two days between 9.30am-4.30pm on the piece.
Adding some more dots to the piece as we talk, Dali says he doesn't set out with a plan but the artwork takes shape as he goes.
He says the community of Hawke's Bay inspired his work.
For two years during summer, Dali also works at festivals as a body painter – an idea that started as a joke at a party when he began drawing on a friend to make it a bit more fun.
Artists who inspire him are American artist Keith Haring and Eko Nugroho, who is from the same Indonesian city as him.
His next goal is to tour around New Zealand galleries doing the same thing - "spread the word and spread the love".
Today is the Day runs until July 25.
'I can't see this lasting unless they have a budget to lock fullas up in jail.'