An artist at Large : in Pursuit of Ang Ah Tee
By Bridget Tracy Tan, 2006
The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,
Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.
Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
Barely 60 by 60 cm in size, Ang Ah Tee's recent work 'A Village in Li Jiang' unfolds the universe in a profusion of roofs. The perspective seems to swell forward, fading surely into the horizon, met by a destiny of grey and white mountain peaks. In a cascade of light and dark earth tones, Ang leads us out, about and beyond, deftly paving our path with a rich tapestry of impasto tiles.
Landscape is perhaps the most intriguing and infinite of the painted genres. It draws inspiration from life and land, from the quarry of universe bound up in civilization. Whitman teaches us though that even the land is unable to satiate our untold wants and desires. The voyager in our story is as much Ang Ah Tee as he is the undiscovered country itself.
"I love to travel," Ang tells me. "I like looking at different places, being inspired by different lands, different cultures." He repeatedly affirms he is not very good at conversation, while all the time engaging me with his traveling tales and life anecdotes. The truth be told, Ang and I spend a great deal of time gazing silently at his artworks. His paintings capture your attention indefinitely from several directions. At his home and studio, I am presented with his recent paintings in succession. Some hang on his walls like gallery pieces, lit with track mounted halogen lights. It is clear that he feels strongly about the visual context for his work. The works are primarily and heavily abstract paintings that up close propose a complex pattern of swabs and marks, colour patches and mind-boggling textures. They illustrate a mind map that is at once visually enticing and enigmatic. From a reasonable distance, the paint marks lock into place and erect mountain, sky, church domes,
swathes of roofs and alleyways. To look at the wide range of landscapes from Italy and England to China and back home in Singapore, is to recreate the dreams and journeys that one man has embarked upon, always inspired, unceasing. The paintings are not just recognizable landscapes in themselves, but an exploration of how human experience transcends geographical boundaries to cherish a universal truth, a universal beauty.
Born in 1943, Ang Ah Tee trained at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in .the pivotal generation between 1960 and 1962. The artists of this period were exposed to a trove of modern art techniques prevalent in the work of 19th century Parisian masters as well as the abstract tendencies of acutely personal, vividly individual expressions. Such styles defined the work of artists working around the world during the early 20th century and later came to hallmark the post-world war II generation in Paris and New York, two mid century centres of artistic excellence. Ang regales me with stories of his days in the Academy. He shares the thorny memories of being sat down and schooled to draw still life - the same apple, the same vase, the same cloth. Such studious discipline was possibly restrictive for the artist who today makes his name with generously abstract paintings: an artist fixated not on stillness of life but on enlivening still moments captured on his canvas. Every landscape, every building, every boat, river and wall is infused with an atmospheric verve found only in that very moment in time. In one of our earlier conversations, I mention the work of Cheong Soo Pieng, whose broad talent produced some of the more radical abstract works of the 60s. Ang smiles to remember Cheong, who was a strong and silent mentor to a generation of artists still working today. There is some admiration and envy when he describes Cheong's ease of marketing many of his works. Cheong could not speak any English, Ang tells me. He sometimes asked his students to speak on his behalf when Caucasian buyers came to purchase his work. To be able to paint and then sell the work was possibly the yardstick of success for aspiring artists of the time. Ang was no exception.
Ang Ah Tee began his working life in a private company at the Port of Singapore Authority in Singapore. He gamely talks about how much (how little) he earned and the long hours he worked. He realized that he enjoyed painting from his earliest practice, but that his job prevented him from concentrating as much time as he preferred on his art. "Even on Sundays and weekends, all hours," laments Ang. "You were on call. A ship could come in and you'd have to be there to work." In time he decided he had to concentrate on painting full-time - doing what he loved and clearly, he loves art. For surely, an artist, James MacNeill Whistler once said, is paid not for his labours, but for his vision.
Ang is quick to point out that his early career mirrored struggles - an odd oil painting sold here and there, with no guarantee of a consistent paycheck. He warms up considerably when he shares how when the late Delia Butcher became a staunch supporter of artists in the 80s, he was able to hold several solo exhibitions in succession. These were matched in reward by the sales of his work that gained him exposure and a steady patronage. Establishing this groundwork is naturally important to an artist's development. It is obvious that Ang does not paint for commercial transaction - but that what he paints, has captured the attention and imagination of potential collectors and his current patrons. "I didn't just develop this way of painting overnight," Ang tells me energetically. The transitions from his early oils in both abstract and representational into the richly textured acrylics today read like the story of his own creative adventures. For a while, acrylic on paper took hold of his work. In another foray, flat planes and even colours describe his surface. His paint has maintained the tradition of abstract renderings though, the extent of abstraction being a barometer of his own personal reactions. "I have work that is very abstract," Ang warns me. We joke about how people believe only an elite are entitled to decipher and appreciate completely abstract painting. But for Ang, his work finds a spirited balance somehow, between the gestural paint marks and the outlines of the landscapes he prefigures. Long before you recognize a famous church steeple or dome, long before you see a landmark or a familiar alleyway, Ang draws you in a visual dance of light and dark, of what is tactile and a racing pattern. Possibly more well known for his reds and yellows, golds and browns, some of Ang's recent, more monochromatic silvery greys have altered the moods of his work. Not one to fuss about his palette, Ang confides he favours his usual colours including the reds - but that he tries to evoke a difference through variation in his palette. Works like 'Rear Window', 'Dawn in Israel' and 'City of Dreams' flesh out a mood, a feeling more than just pure form. They recall an earlier 2000 work 'Lau Pa Sat', that captures the airy interior in monochromatic hues, adding a weighty, dream-like thoughtfulness. The setting is cool, but not cold. It is distant but not alienated. The earthbound tones recall something nostalgic. The rich and agitated textures created by the paint marks remind us that the work emerged from a single human hand. It delivers the warm-blooded frankness we need to look, and look again at the scene before us.
By his own omission, Ang Ah Tee is a very frank individual and it is apparent he likes being that way. It is this sporting 'frankness' that characterizes his familiar yellow and red works such as Clarke Quay' 2005 or 'Bustling Chinatown'. It keeps the work fresh and unexpected. Vibrant reds pop from the canvas. Vertical marks of posts and people with horizontal graphics of laundry poles, windows and awnings dart our gaze from left to right, up and down. We are locked into the space with so much life, but are compelled to 'make out' and identify the actual forms that describe Ang's experiences, that describe his experiences to us. My advice is, don't look too hard. There is a simplicity and purity borne in the act of painting such semi-abstract works. In both its making and our appreciation, it is the instant and the moment that flavours our experience. You look once and come back to it again, to retrieve that flavour or better yet, try to get a fresh one. "Art bids us touch, taste and see the world," said Irish poet William Butler Yeats. There is evidence of the delectable and the distinctive in Ang Ah Tee's paintings. His 'St Paul's Cathedral' 2005 brings us right to the place itself: the dome carefully nestles amid a cocoon of light and dark, giving it suggestive shapeliness. The bridge before middle ground draws us in with a hint of its dynamic arches. From left to right, there is a sunlit coolness that washes through, bringing unity to the space in our sight and on the surface. Stark white and red blots add sensual movement, kept to a minimum of course. St Paul's is 'picture book' monumental but so real. It looms high in the sky but swirls with the spirit of daily life and daily movement around it.
"I have some really abstract work," Ang tells me again. He leads me into his studio area and pulls out a series of surprising work. He calls these paintings his 'modern' art. If his acrylic landscapes propose light and movement, his 'very abstract' work conjure up poetic silence. Without the deft broad swabs of paint, these paintings use flat planes of well-defined, solid colours to invoke imagery. Faces are broken up in masklike renditions; rocks and water are block like and basic. Animals like buffalo and birds are reduced to rudimentary, angular forms. Light and shade, variations like feathers and colours are transformed into patterns and overlay. Simple, stark, with no subtlety in between. Paintings such as the 'Puppets', 'Buffaloes' and the 'Blue Waves', transfer both a sense of realism and fantasy - invoking folklore and folk art - at once a story, a myth, at once part of life, living and civilization.
Ang is of two minds about these works. In some sense, they remain a part from his usual practice and provide no connection, however loose, to each other. The landscapes are rich and various, living and breathing. By comparison, the more abstract works provide an interesting contrast: simple and immediate imagery. If the landscapes are musical pieces playing from an operatic score, the abstract paintings are quiet, single stanza poems. The tonal range of images of Venice and the Esplanade slide from one end to another, whereas the colours of the 'Bride and Groom' or 'Birds and Boats' are elemental and immutable. Perhaps the two styles of work share a child-like enthusiasm in gathering life, arranging its various parts and building up a picture. In finality, it is a picture that dissembles as much as it discloses. Ang readily shares he sketches and paints from memory as well. Sometimes, pictures emerge as a combination of fiction and the reality of place - passing through his tunnel of imagination from darkness into the light.
This is perhaps the intriguing range that escapes name and nature, for a prolific and perseverant painter such as Ang. There is a joy in his art making that brings life to each brushstroke, plane and form. It is a celebration of creating and making images that attract us to his complex canvasses. On the clock tower of Victoria Memorial Hall ('View from Clarke Quay') that he has painted and featured repeatedly in several works, Ang is visibly disturbed by the assumption that he has made copies of a single image. "I paint it from different angles," he offers. "It [is an iconic piece of architecture that] seems to pop out whenever I am painting the Singapore River." He makes no apology for revisitinga place and havinga slew of 'Chinatowns', 'Clarke Quays' or 'Singapore Rivers'. The magic is not so much in his ability to paint with interest anew, the same subject matter, but how he invites us into that singular moment of creation. "Every artist dips his brush in his own soul," said an unknown philosopher. "And paints his own nature into his pictures."
Over the last 30 years, Ang Ah Tee has embraced the spirit of discovery in his paintings. In each work, we can glean some part of his life, his personality, his thought and his aspirations. The vivacity of his painted expressions outwits our attempts to pin down his style and subject matter. His work will continue to capture in both certain and uncertain terms, the unique burst of life that temporarily effuses our imagination. And if it cannot live within our memories, it can surely be found in the work of Ang Ah Tee.
Bridget Tracy Tan
Director (Gallery & Theatre)
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
