This type of symbolic conciousness on a large scale made the en and wornen of Ball into a people who were not shy to evolve their personal talents in artistic fields.

The result was a curious admix-ture of glorious ritualistic spectacles and narrow aesthetic parameters - the development of a wide variety of crafts, greater acceptance of traditional depictions as sacrosanct and a belated artistic sense of individual purpose. The Balinese wold is rife with ritual, mistery and unshakable belief in the singularity of nature. All aspects must be contemplated through the senses to reach that divine, detached state of mind which has become crucial to the survival of many contemporary Balinese artists. When Sika talks of magi c, trance, the supernatural and spirituality, it is not a new fangled theory which he is exploring.

He is in fact verbalizing a very ancient bond between the Balinese and his universe, a philosophy which gripped the western medieval world, was rejected by the renaissance, and has been resurrected in our time." The formal identity is subject to continuous change, but we should not lose our spiritual identity",says sika.

lle is fond of repeating the adage " the more we know, the last we know", saying, - by returning to my source, I am earning back to pre-classic painting, rejecting ornament for abstrack symbolism, in both colors and motifs. I can no longer use the ' wayang ' style to convey complicated concepts. For example, I use symbolic colors to depict the Hindu Trinity :