Bali: The day Myuran Sukumaran learnt he was going to be executed, he stopped painting and drawing.
He stopped for more than a week; the longest period since 2012, when he begged Ben Quilty - the man John Olsen described as Australia's most promising painter - to teach him all he knew.
"Myuran said: "Ben, I haven't made anything for a week . . . I've had so much else on my mind," says Quilty, who visited Sukumaran at Bali's Kerobokan prison on Saturday. "I said to him: 'Myuran, what are you going to do, sit on your arse, what else are you going to do? Just keep going. It was perfect timing for me to be in there because I gave him a new project and he had a bit of fire in his eyes when we left and he was ready to start again."
The two men worked obsessively all day - Quilty taught Sukumaran a new technique where you use paint to draw - and they talked about everything. "He told me he had researched you either sit down or stand up when you are shot and he said 'I'm going to learn how to do a handstand in a month' and he had tears in his eyes."
Quilty had to psyche himself up for Saturday's visit. It was his first since the news broke that Indonesian President Joko Widodo had refused Sukumaran's plea for clemency over his role in the infamous Bali Nine plot to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin out of Bali. It was also the day six other prisoners on death row in Indonesia would be executed for drug offences.
"I was dreading it . . . I wanted to see Myuran, but I just thought it was going to break me. The weirdest thing is I got in there feeling kind of desperate and I left feeling better because Myuran made me forget about it all. It's difficult to explain . . . he's full of hope."
Sukumaran was doing better than Quilty dared to imagine. "He's good at talking about it, I think he and [fellow Bali Nine ringleader on death row] Andrew [Chan] have been consistently talking about it, talking how to cope emotionally. I think they are doing it together, they don't have a big support network because they are in another country."
It was Quilty's sixth visit to the prison to mentor Sukumaran and - whatever happens - not his last. Prisoners on death row in Indonesia have 72 hours' notice before they are killed and Quilty will be there in time to say goodbye. He's not sure how he will cope, but he will be there. "I can't even begin to understand the concept of a bullet entering Myuran now I know him . . . it's very f---ing confronting."
Quilty has got to know Chan well too. "Myuran and Andrew are both great blokes, really funny, lovely, quiet. I saw Andrew the first time and he had a shaved head. I thought he looked like the cliche of a Cabramatta gangster, but then you talk to him he has the thickest Aussie accent and he is an obsessive Penrith Panthers fan. He has all these incredible young footballers who come and visit him who play for Australia and Penrith. He's got his own network . . . and God."
Both Chan and Sukumaran have been full of praise for the assistance provided by Australia's consul-general in Bali, Majell Hind, and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. "Julie Bishop has been amazing . . . I think that will come more to light," Quilty says.
Quilty reckons Sukumaran can draw as well as him now. "I told him I am going to plant drugs on him and leave him in here so he can't come and compete with me on the outside." Quilty has been amazed by Sukumaran's dedication to the practice of art. "It really is through hours and hours and hours of practice and the drawings are beautiful, they are f---ing beautiful. They are all inmates, there are drawings of Andrew, there are self-portraits, but the best things are the drawings he has been doing with coloured pencils."
Quilty is a decorated artist. He has won the Archibald Prize, the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and went to Afghanistan as Australia's official war artist. Sukumaran has inspired his own work. After three or four visits to the prison Sukumaran told Quilty to visit Kuta. "I said, I don't like Kuta, it's a dingy s---hole, full of horrible debauchery and masculine madness. He said: 'Yeah, that's what all your work is about, isn't it?' It was very confronting to see that place. I was embarrassed by my nationality. But of course it fed into my practice, I made a massive work about it which Bendigo Regional Art Gallery bought and it was in the Saatchi show in London. I wouldn't have done that without Myuran. I hadn't thought about that before."
Quilty has been posting messages of support on social media for Sukumaran, with the blessing of lawyer Julian McMahon. "It's just amazing how many people say: 'He made the decision to do it [smuggle drugs] in Indonesia'. Sit down with Myuran and tell me that at the end of the conversation. I think so many of us missed out on being taught about compassion."
So what has knowing Sukumaran taught Quilty? Suddenly there is silence. Quilty is choked up, his eyes red, staring into his barely touched plate of mee goreng.
"I don't know," he whispers, struggling to get out the words. "Not to import drugs."
