Laila Airlie Dempster A Retrospective, Remembrances & Celebration of Life 1940 - 2018 Book 3 - Remembrances - Laila Airlie Dempster 1940 2018 ...

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Laila Airlie Dempster A Retrospective, Remembrances & Celebration of Life 1940 - 2018 Book 3 - Remembrances - Laila Airlie Dempster 1940 2018 ...
Laila Airlie Dempster
            A Retrospective, Remembrances & Celebration of Life
                                1940 – 2018
                          Book 3 - Remembrances
                      Laila Airlie Dempster 1940 – 2018 Self-Portrait
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Laila Airlie Dempster A Retrospective, Remembrances & Celebration of Life 1940 - 2018 Book 3 - Remembrances - Laila Airlie Dempster 1940 2018 ...
For Laila’s family and friends
                    To recognize
             the 40th Day Selamatan
                  Wisma Subud
                  26 April 2018
            Laila Airlie Dempster 1940 – 2018 Self-Portrait
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Woman in Pink

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Remembrances
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Alexandra Asseily

                                             Thank you so much for sharing this,
                                             even though it is such heart-breaking
                                             news. I was looking forward to seeing
                                             Laila at Congress – wafting through, like
                                             a beautiful butterfly, not stopping long,
                                             anywhere…Oh well, she has now gone
                                             ahead of us and will no doubt be
                                             waiting for us, as beautiful and as
                                             unchanged as ever!

                                             Alexandra
                                             London and Beirut
                                             27 March 2018

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Grape Hyacinth, Muscari
            Katharine O’Sullivan Walmsley, London

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Ulfiah Brodjolukito

                                     Très chère Laela

   Tu es partie en beauté, t'envolant comme une plume douce; ton pinceau magique
                                 entre tes doigts de fée.

  Puisse le début de ce nouveau voyage vers la lumière de la liberté et du bonheur, la
        grâce universelle que tu as tant attendue te soit révélée éternellement

      Malgré notre chemin parcouru ensemble de longues années en harmonie et
      désaccords, tu resteras pour moi une vraie soeur Subud montrant à tous un
    exemple de soumission et de fidélité à Dieu et à Bapak J M durant tes épreuves
                                  évidentes de ta vie.

                    Pour toi, Laela, ma profonde affection vibrera
                           dans mon coeur pour toujours.

                                          Ulfiah
                                       Wisma Subud
                                       4 April 2018
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Stuart Cooke

                                         MY DEAR FRIEND LAILA
   L  aila was my dear friend. She was also
   my neighbor. You see she lived just below
                                                turned this way and that over the years. We
                                                talked about life and spiritual matters,
   me. We would speak every day on my way       always in sync in our feelings.
   past her terrace living on my way upstairs       Passing by, Laila would be painting or
   to my apartment above hers. We would         hosting friends. She was the hostess with
   laugh and joke and often repeat songs        the mostest on the Wisma Subud
   from the forties and fifties back and forth  compound (a kind of estate with over 80
   to one another . I’d imitate her British     residents).
   accent saying, “Hello dahling, how are           Her patio living room, surrounded by
   you?”.                                       flowers and plants, was an open salon for
        She would laugh, saying the same back   everyone. I’d never know who might be
   to me. After chatting I’d toddle off with    there. It could be other residents, visiting     Laila’s patio living room
   both of us saying, “Toodle ooh” or           guests from overseas, friends from
   another British expression, always smiling.  elsewhere in Jakarta or the other islands.
        She often invited me to lunch, which    One thing I could be sure of was that
   was a treat as every meal was scrumptious.   when I’d look in, whoever was there
   We shared a love for all kinds of cuisines,  would be smiling. Her lightness and joy
   French, Spanish, Italian, and, of course,    were infectious.
   Indonesian. We spoke about our previous                            •••
   lives in Europe, other parts of Asia, and        Do Do and his wife Arini were among
   for me, in America. We grew up more or       Laila’s closest friends. Do Do worked with
   less at the same time, in the nineteen-      Laila almost every day and in the evening,
   fifties and sixties, so our frames of        they were her more or less constant guests.
   reference were similar. I’d tell her my      Here’s what Do Do said about his
   stories and she’d tell me hers. And we’d     remembrances of her:
   laugh. Oh, how we laughed. At our foibles,
   at the funny things that had happened to                                                    The hostess with the mostest
   us, or at the strange ways our lives had
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“I’ve known Laila since 2014. I’d just         been speaking in Spanish, but just left it
returned from Central Kalimantan helping       and said goodbye. Usually before going
Subud brothers in the gold mining              home I would kiss her hand (as Javanese
business and was introduced to her by a        people do in respect for their parents). But
friend in Jakarta saying she was looking for   this time Laila hugged me and kissed my
people who could help her with her             left and right cheek, thanking me for
painting. My first impression was she was      everything. Arini got the same hug. We
a good woman, a mother, soft, cheerful         went home smiling about how much we
and full of energy. I was very happy to        loved her. To me Laila was a humble
meet her because I also like painting and it   person. She treated everyone the same,
ended up we can work well together. In         rich or poor, this country or that, daily
short, I came to think of Laila as my own      worker or highly educated. This was a
mother. She liked to give me instructions,     valuable lesson for both of us.”
advice, and a positive spirit in terms of
good painting techniques as well as
psychology. Coincidentally my wife, Arini,
liked to talk to her about psychology as                                                        Laila with her friends
well.                                                                                         Rochana Fernandez from
    The night before Laila’s passing, we                                                      Spain and Rochana Keele
were exchanging ideas. She was making                                                              from the USA.
preparations for a new painting of Ibu
Rahayu and for a one-woman show in
November. As usual she was full of
energy, sometimes dancing to the strains
of songs from her laptop. At about 8:30
pm I said goodbye to go home with Arini.
Laila suddenly looked at me with a blank
look… It was like her eyes were a mirror.
She spoke strangely in long passages of
Spanish, which she knows I don’t know.
After a few moments she realized she’d                     Dodo and Arini
                                                                                              A typical late afternoon at
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When Laila was in her twenties, she landed     figure puppets of Javanese plays taken
some modeling jobs in London. One day          from the Indian Hindu epics the
an agent asked if he could represent her       Ramayana and Mahabharata, Javanese                             Laila
for acting roles in the movies. He said she    dancing, and others.
could be the new Julie Christie. Once can          For the past several years Laila wanted     Born of British parents in
see why. But her father did not approve,       to stop her portrait commission work in         Maracaibo, Venezuela, Laila Airlie is
and she continued to develop as a painter.     order to dedicate herself to creating a         a portrait artist who started drawing
                                               permanent exhibition in Jakarta, which          as a child.        Brought up in a
                                               would celebrate Javanese culture. It would      diplomatic family, she lived in many
                                               be modeled after the two rooms devoted          parts of the world before settling in
                                               to Monet’s Lilies at the Musée de               Indonesia in 1971. She began her
                                               l'Orangerie in Paris. Entitled, “The Secret     studies in Barcelona, Spain with the
                                               World of Java”, its purpose was to remind       great master Alfredo Sisquella.
                                               Indonesians of that part of their identity      Sisquella was one of the original
                                               which stems from the rich culture of            members of the Barcelona group of
                                               Central Java — Javanese dance, Gamelan          artists that included Pablo Picasso.
                                               music, Wayang Kulit (the shadow puppet              A child prodigy, when she studied
           Laila                               plays), etc. — which while still alive, is in   at the British Council in Singapore at
                                               many respects fading.                           11 her life drawings were almost as
                            Julie Christie                                                     developed as they are today, and
                                                   We wrote proposals to fund the
    After arriving in Indonesia in the early   exhibit, which included a short biography       seven years later she received her
1970s, Laila learned the language, became      of her life.                                    first portrait commissions.        She
friends with many Indonesians, traveled            A rough idea of the exhibit appears on      continued her studies at the St.
among the islands, and for a time, lived in    the following pages in an effort to             Martin’s School of Art in London at
a small village in Central Java to paint and   simulate Laila’s dream.                         17, and five years later at the Byam
absorb the culture. While her work                                                             Shaw School of Art in London. Her
focused on portraiture, it expanded to                                                         works have been exhibited and
landscapes, and included examples of                                                           collected by individual owners and
Javanese culture in the forms of batik                                                         galleries in Europe and elsewhere
sarongs, wooden carvings, architecture,                                                        with a number now held in museums
characters from the celebrated shadow and                                                      around the world.
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MONET’S LILIES • MUSÉE DE L'ORANGERIE • PARIS

                           Explanation

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LAILA’S DREAM

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LAILA’S DREAM

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Every day now as I walk by her home, I
smile with happiness, knowing she is
happy in the other place, while
remembering all the fun she brought to
my life. God bless you Laila and bring you
his grace.

Stuart Cooke,
Wisma Subud
17 April, 2018

                 Laila’s

                                                                                   Wisma Subud
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Sylvia and Roderick des Tombe
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Sylvia des Tombe

Over the years since I visited Jakarta in 1970           Laila always looked lovely and was very
and, after my marriage in the latihan hall in            diplomatic in her dealings with us all.
October 1971, moved to Cilandak, I had the
pleasure of getting to know Laila Dempster,              Her love for and dedication to the latihan,
both as a friend and an artist.                          Subud members and Indonesia was profound
                                                         and superseded everything in her life. It was
In time, she painted all the members of my               also reciprocated.
nuclear family, starting after my horseback
riding accident in 1989, which made it perfectly         Laila was loved by generations of children who
clear that I wasn't going to live forever.               grew up in Wisma Subud. They all called her
                                                         'Auntie Laila' and felt very close to and loved by
After I moved to Russia and then back to the             her.
US, when I visited Cilandak, Laila was one of
the first people I visited.                              Laila's paintings really captured the essence of
                                                         their subjects and are a pleasure to behold.
She was always welcoming and gracious and
helped me re-orient myself. Laila was a                  Those of us who have had the privilege of
repository of all kinds of knowledge about               knowing her will miss her greatly.
Indonesia.
                                                         Sylvia des Tombe
                                                         California
                                                         20 April 2018

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Dr. Gerard P. Kuiper, displayed at the Kuiper Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
            at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona with grandson Matthew des Tombe
                                   and great-grandson, Aiden des Tombe
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Shanty Harmayn

                           In 1989, I met this lovely lady and great portrait
                           painter named Laila Dempster. We spent almost a
                           week together, as I sat for her to paint my portrait.
                           Many can say that sitting for a portrait can be
                           painful, but definitely not my sitting for Laila. She
                           always looked stunning, wearing dresses in blood red
                           or orange color. But foremost, she was a fabulous
                           storyteller, entertaining and very funny too! As a 22-
                           year old, I was totally fascinated by her stories,
                           journeys and encounters. Yesterday, I received news
                           that Laila had passed away in her sleep. May you
                           Rest in Peace Laila. Thank you for our week
                           together, thank you for your art and your great life
                           stories always stayed with me. The world will miss
                           your bright, sparkling light.

                           Instagram #lailadempster

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Laila selected the colours for the ornamentation at
            The Muhammad Subuh Centre in Rungan Sari, Kalimantan.

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Wayne Lerrigo & Family
                                              Alicia, Lydia and Robert Lerrigo, MD

                               Oh yes, Dad, so many wonderful memories.

                               We were Mrs Green and Mrs Brown. We would
                               sit together having tea on her porch when she
                               lived upstairs in the new guest house. She made
                               that porch so pretty with flowers and plants and a
                               colorful awning. We would have these wonderful
                               chocolates she brought from Singapore.

                               Aunty Laila gave me wonderful hugs when I was
                               sad. She called me “Pet”. She always looked
                               pretty and smelled wonderful. She was like a
                               mother to me. I will miss her dearly and am so
                               glad that two of my daughters were able to meet
                               her.

                               Lydia Lerrigo
                               California
                               3 April 2018

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Ruslan Morris & Family
                                           Rahaju Morris and Runy Morris Safcik

                               Laila was truly my sister, perhaps more so than
                               anyone else including my biological sister. I loved
                               her wit, her beauty, her honesty, her cooking, her
                               diction and much more. In 45 years I never heard
                               anyone say a bad word about Laila, nor a bad
                               word from Laila about anyone. My wife Rahaju
                               was close to Laila as well. We treasure her portrait
                               of our four girls when they were little. If I had to
                               give one word to describe Laila it would be
                               “ichlas”.                                     Ruslan

                               Laila was a "glow" everywhere she went, from her
                               beauty, outfit, elegance, and soft spoken. Some
                               Indonesians called her "Putri Solo Subud" (Subud’s
                               Princess from Solo). Her talent in portrait painting
                               is truly one of its kind - it's so alive - I treasure our
                               4 girls’ painting. Greatly missed.                 Rahaju

                               "Aunt Laila" always made me laugh with her
                               stories and jokes. She entertained while painting
                               and will be missed. Runy Morris Safcik 16 April 2018

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Maria Perry
                                 Dearest Laila,

                                 I knew you before you went to Tjilandak. We used to go
                                 to Central London Latihan, long before Amadeus, or
                                 even Anugraha, were dreamed of and you stayed with
                                 your Aunt, (Auntie P.*, I think you called her) in a flat on
                                 Campden Hill. I lived, exactly where I live now. Neither
                                 of us were famous. You had just begun to paint
                                 portraits. I was an eager young actress and remember
                                 you as so pretty and ‘ever young’.

                                 You came back from Tjilandak, some years later, a
                                 mature and distinguished artist. You had not changed.
                                 Still the same delicate complexion and the same lilting
                                 laugh. We both went a long way in our careers. You
                                 painted many grand people and I am an internationally
                                 known historian - one book in a ninth edition. I am so
                                 glad you enjoyed Knightsbridge Woman. It was the first
                                 in a trio of funny books about London. They even made
                                 the Queen laugh!

                                 Rest in peace , Darling. You will always shine in our
                                 memories and your portraits are your legacy.

                                  With love.
                                  Maria
                                  London 4 April 2018 * Pep for Pepita, aka Mabel.
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Maria Perry at Harrods Book Signing

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Olvia Reksodipoetro

                                                        About Laila

                                      Besides looking always beautiful and
                                      elegant, Laila was one of the sweetest
                                      persons I have ever known.

                                      Laila was a talented artist and also
                                      someone with a lot of depth and enormous
                                      generosity. She looked after new expat
                                      Subud members and visitors, but also after
                                      Indonesian Subud members going through
                                      tough times, helping them to find ways to
                                      overcome their problems.

                                      She was a dear friend and I miss her.

                                      Olvia
                                      Wisma Subud
                                      16 April 2018

                                      Bouquet by Laila - Idul Fitri 2017
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Leonard Van Hien

                                  This might be the last portrait completed by Laila.
                                  At my request she very kindly agreed to give a
                                  “lesson around a painting” at our home in
                                  Pamulang to two Afghan refugee sisters,
                                  Farahnaz, an acclaimed artist in her own right,
                                  and Farzana. The portrait is of the younger sister
                                  Farzana. The three of them had such fun
                                  together. The sisters adored Laila and were
                                  shocked and saddened to hear of her passing.

                                  Leonard Van Hien
                                  Pamulang
                                  31 March 2018

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Katharine O’Sullivan Walmsley

                                  I am remembering Laila from 1971 when
                                  we shared our sleeping quarters at the
                                  1971 World Congress in Jakarta to our many
                                  visits to Indonesia. A very serene Laila with
                                  much laughter and joy whether she was
                                  painting or just being Laila. May all
                                  blessings be upon her as she continues her
                                  life’s journey.

                                  Katharine
                                  London
                                  1 April 2018

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I first met Laila in 1972. A fun and bubbly personality .
Although there was sadness in Laila
she sailed far above the harshness of this world.

I came to know Laila best through her portraits.
Each one an insightful rendering of the subject
but all of them possessed an ethereal quality.

That was the quality of Laila., ethereal and sensitive.
Laila observed, witnessed and recorded the people
around her
while she herself lived in two worlds.

Laila, a magical piece of the beautiful mosaic that makes
up our Subud family.
May God’s blessings be with you always.

                                                        David
                                                  Wisma Subud
                                                   3 April 2018

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David and Carolyn Whitaker
  It was with great sadness I learnt of her passing from you. I thank you for letting
    me know. She was a dear friend of SO, SO many years and did the portrait of
                  Carolyn and I for my 60th birthday. A great loss.
                         David A. Whitaker, England, 20 March 2018
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Happy Birthday to the Septuagenarians! October 2016

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Laila

The yet another passing                                         One such number, rather shady
of another orang asing                                          Feature’d Lydia, the Tattoo’d Lady!
depletes attendees of                                           Fame’d on film by Groucho Marx
Congress ‘seventy-one.                                          Laila’ filled hers with sparks .

Laila’s bright and brimming presence                            Another number, expertly sung
reflects the very essence                                       with chortling laughter and lots of fun
of that congregation                                            was our joint rendition of French’s edition
‘neath the Indonesian sun .                                     twixt the battling Mamluk and the haughty Hun.

Our hopes were high, Bapak was nigh,                            Born In the same month, of the same year
the future looked secure                                        each October, still quite sober,
the testing and the talks, the socializing walks                saw us render a version tender
gave hope for all, that Subud would endure.                     of Abdulla Bulbul Ameer!

Though she gained her crust by art,                             So, now it’s farewell to our twinkling belle
that skill was only part                                        as she’s borne by zephers above,
of a treasure trove of talent                                   to her judgement day, where we hope and pray
she’d been given at the start.                                  she’ll meet with His limitless love.

She could skip, flit and flutter                                Malcolm
make French desserts from butter                                15 April 2018
make an oriental salad                                          Wisma Subud
or sing a baudy ballad.

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Malcolm and Diane Wildsmith

What would a painting exhibition be without its audience? Just as the painter and the model
have a special rapport, so do the viewers and the painting. An aesthetic appreciation of the
painting’s nuances, its light and its presence complement the artist’s perception. Laila was a
sensitive portrait painter and a vivacious friend, in effect spreading her happiness everywhere.
 Diane
 Wisma Subud
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Miles and Marina
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Ratmi - Laila’s Helper - Wisma Subud
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A Favorite Meal – A Ratouille or Spanish Pisto Variation
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A Favorite Meal – Soto Ayam
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Miles
            Miles Dempster and daughter Marina
            Laila Airlie Dempster 1940 – 2018 Self-Portrait
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Laila’s Terrace at Wisma Subud
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Laila’s Final Resting Spot
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Visiitng an Island Paradise
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Laila Airlie Dempster 1940 – 2018 Self-Portrait
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