The Paintings That Dry on the Porches of Penestanan
Climb the steep stone steps up from the Campuhan bridge and the lane narrows into Penestanan. It’s a village of family compounds on a ridge between two rivers, and on a sunny morning you’ll notice the canvases before anything else. They lean against carved walls and porch pillars, three or four at a time, drying in the light: green terraces, tiny figures bent over the rice, palms in yellows and turquoise brighter than any real palm has ever been.
This is the Young Artists style, and it has an unusually sweet origin story. Around 1960, the Dutch-born painter Arie Smit was living near here and noticed local boys watching him work. He gave them paper and paints and, as the story goes, very little instruction. What came out was flat, joyful and fearless: village life with no perspective, every leaf outlined, every color turned up. The style spread through Penestanan family to family, and in some compounds you’ll still find it passed from parent to child.
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A walk down the lane, a long lunch, the rice fields in the last light of the day. We will send you a three-day Ubud rhythm built around the moments most visitors walk straight past.
Walk slowly and you’ll see the work in progress. A jar of worn brushes on a low table. A wooden palette crusted in a dozen greens. Sometimes the painter is on the porch floor, cross-legged, filling in a single paddy with a brush no wider than a matchstick, and the radio is murmuring somewhere inside. It’s a home first and a studio second, so a smile and a nod from the lane is the right greeting. If a canvas is for sale, someone will usually come out and tell you.
Here’s a gentle tip. Before you buy, ask who painted it and how long it took. The answers are often lovely, and a small piece painted by the person in front of you will mean more on your wall at home than anything from a gallery row in town.
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Three bedrooms, a full in-villa team, and a pool of your own, and mornings slow enough to watch the paint dry. Check availability for your dates.
Penestanan sits right at the start of the Campuhan Ridge Walk, so the two make an easy morning together. For the bigger picture of Balinese painting, our guide to the ARMA museum traces the traditions that came before, and the woodcarver behind the garden wall is another of Ubud’s quiet home workshops. When you stay at a staffed villa in Ubud, the team can point you toward the steps and have cold coconut waiting when you get back. Our Ubud shopping guide covers the rest.
Go in the morning, while the paint is still drying. That’s when the village is most itself.
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