TRAVELANDLEISUREASIA.COM / OCTOBER 2017 23
says Andrew Wise, founder of online magazine
Life, Tailored, who lives in New York City with
his wife Stephanie and has made togethering
an annual tradition. After getting married at
Ani Villas Anguilla (with vows performed by
head butler, Felix), they rented a villa in the
Dominican Republic the next year, then came
with the same group to Ani Thailand. They
were “the best weeks of our lives,” Wise says.
ON AN OBSCENELY BLUE-SKY
day on a fruit-bowl tropical island, I find myself
in a long, dark room with the windows blacked
out, sitting at an easel trying to draw lines with
a charcoal pencil. My orders: make a series of
dots at random, then connect them with as light
and as straight of lines as possible. I do this for
15 m i nutes, my face scr u nch i n g up, my m i nd
tensing, my wrist jumping. Most of my lines are
too dark, some veer off course like a drunk; the
page looks like a blind man’s connect-the-dots.
Instructor Rodney O’Dell Davis, originally
from Orlando, tells me I’m holding the pencil
wrong, points out the few lines that are “not too
bad,” and reminds me that if I were a student
here, I’d be doing this all day. And all tomorrow.
The Waichulis curriculum of hyperrealism,
created by Pennsylvania artist Anthony
Waichulis, is a deliberate practice, skills-based
process rooted in part in 19th-century French
artistic training. It’s all repetition. You do one
exercise until you’ve perfected it, then move on
to the next, which builds on all those that came
before. Straight lines are lesson No. 1 because
they’re the building blocks of everything, even
spheres, a fact that blows
my mind. O’Dell Davis
nods—“spheres kicked
my ass”—but waves off
my wonder. “You learn to
break things down into
the simplest forms.”
“Being on an island is
conducive to education,”
he says. “There are not a lot
of distractions.” That’s a
dubious claim to a beach bum
like me, especially considering
how impressive the arrival at Ani
Art Academy is. The vista under the
grand peaked roof looks across verdant rice
paddies, low rolling hills and out to the sea
beyond. But this is intended as a source of
fleeting inspiration at most, for the students
will spend 3½ years (two years of drawing,
18 months of painting) minimum, eight hours
a day average, in the classrooms under a
stringent program of hyperrealism.
It’s not exactly the art form you’d expect
springing up on an Asian isle. But take a peek
over the shoulder of one student, Yos. The
40-year-old from a nearby province has been
studying here since its opening two years ago
and is creating his own version of a
photograph of a traditional Thai building in
foliage. Glancing between the photo and his
drawing, it’s impossible to know which is
which. In fact, in some ways, his drawing looks
more like a photo. It’s uncanny.
“I don’t believe in talent; I believe in innate
ability,” O’Dell Davis tells me, explaining that
he admits students based on personality and
dedication, not whether they’ve ever held a
brush. “It all comes down to work ethic. Most
people think artists live a bohemian lifestyle,
get up at noon, splash some paint on the wall,
call it a day. The reality is most artists clock 30CLOCKWISE FROM
TOP: Ani Villas Sri
Lanka; founder
Tim Reynolds; Ani
Villas Thailand;
that sunset glow
in Phang Nga Bay,
Thailand.