Kartika has no permanent studio; like Affandi, she prefers to paint outside in the village environment where she interacts directly with her subjects and on-lookers.

This contrasts with most contemporary Indonesian painters, who work in their studios from mind-images, memory, photographs or sketches.

Born in 1930s, when men still dominated the art world, Kartika is among a small group of women painters who from the mid-1980s succeeded in exhibiting their work on a regular basis and in gaining limited critical recognition.

In a culture where genitals are considered taboo in representation, Kartika has painted her own nudity graphically and without the prescribed, distancing sweetness, never depicting the body as an object of pleasure, whether that of others or her own.

Given their close bond, Kartika painted penetrating portraits of her father, right through to his final years of debilitating illness.

Following in the populist footsteps of Affandi, Kartika has often painted rural and dispossessed people such as fishermen, farmers, workers and beggars.

Although narrative, her paintings when viewed close up dissolve into strong, abstract statements in energetically applied impasto oils.