艺术家 - 林子平
By 何自力, 转载自《林子平》, 2003
90年代，我从国外回到新加坡，很偶然地在乐龄书画会的雅集活动中认识了林子平先生。起初，我并没有发觉他有什么与众不同。后来在博物馆举办的他的个展中，我才第一次观赏到他的彩墨画作，觉得非常亲切 - 他选择的大众熟悉的街巷村落的题材，他那有独特性格的既写实又写意的笔墨，不正是我一直向往的吗？
真正认识艺术家林子平，是更偶然的。有一回，我请他来中巴鲁看我那几年零零星星搞的习作。离开时，他突然对我家隔壁的门口发生了极大的兴趣：原来，那里堆放着八九双建筑工人的鞋子，破旧脏湿，横去竖来，乱成一团。林先生越看越兴奋，说："这堆鞋子画出来一定很妙！"顿时，我深深地体会到，眼前这位七十多岁的老画家，是个真正的艺术家。
从表面上看1998年5月开始，我和林先生结伴，几乎每个周末都到乌敏岛写生，一去就去了一年半。这样，我不仅得以亲睹林先生如何选材、取景、起稿、作画和修画，更难得的，是有大量的时间，在车上和舟中与他交谈 - 听他讲往事，听他谈梦想，听他讲艺术，听他谈人生。我对他的艺术和他的为人的了解便逐渐地加深。
林先生很坚持要出外写生。本来他已经用了几十年时间，沿新加坡河，穿旧街老巷，入马来甘榜，翻印尼山岭，到处写生；那丰富的经验真够他老来在画室里搞闭门创作。但是他仍然争取一切机会，到日晒风吹雨淋中去，到大众的天地生息苦乐中去，让自己的身心情性融入其中，再让自己对自然对人生的感受和体会通过笔墨抒发出来。所以他写生，写的不是外在的东西，而是内在的东西。 每一次外出写生，他都是那么地兴奋和认真：好像是对无穷的宇宙进行一次新的探索，好像是在无尽的艺术学习中上新的一课。
每一次外出写生，他都是那么地刻苦、拼命。有时因此头个晚上睡不好觉，当天带着一些药物奔波上路，一动起画笔就完全不知劳累，放笔"收工"时才感到疲惫万分，还要一路撑回家中…他的画感人，除了激情和工夫，还因包含了心血和汗水。 林先生的成就和修养，使他成为一位异常谦逊的艺术家。他常说："艺术是永无止境界的。"他总是往很深很远很高处看，因此总是觉得自己还浅，步伐太慢，还有很长的路要走，很高的峰要攀。他的谦逊，使他特别地好学。从各原始部落的艺术，到中国的汉砖石刻、石门颂碑刻/敦煌壁画等等，从东方的黄宾虹，到西方的塞尚…他拼命吸吮着各源各流、各门各派，各位大师巨匠的精华，如饥似渴。他的谦逊好学，使他勇于和乐于求索。他心中没有装着自己的成就，他没有拿成就去做"商标"，他没有靠成就来"吃饭"。他追求的是突破点- 而突破正意味着敢于挑战和胜过自己的一切成就。
从林子平先生近两三年的书法、国画、油画中，以及三者的进一步融合中，似乎可以看到这突破的开始。
THE ARTISTIC OEUVRE OF LIM TZE PENG
By Choy Weng Yang, 2003
Spanning an overwhelming 60 years, Lim Tze Peng has been committed to the pursuit of painting without any diversions. He has been involved in three major enduring realms of art - Chinese ink painting with its elusive techniques and an understanding of Chinese traditions, Western landscape paintings which call for sharp observation and a sensitivity to nature's sensations and Chinese calligraphy art, whose requisites are scholarship and agility of the mind.
A serious, relentless pursuer of his art, Tze Peng has to date created over 2000 artworks in ink paintings, oils, calligraphy art and ink sketches. The scope of his painting locations and the spectrum of his themes are equally wide ranging: the Singapore River, old Singapore haunts, charming meandering canals of China's Suzhou, picturesque quaint villages of yesteryear at Phuket, euphoric festivals and thronged market scene in Bali, Paris's glamorous River Seine.
Tze Peng's unwavering zeal for artistic pursuit continues to grow as he still sees artistic potential temptingly awaiting his attention. Through the years initially, Tze Peng has forged an unique ink painting style born out of Eastern and Western concepts and practices. Versed in Chinese history, scholarship and the artistic legacy, Tze Peng was immediately lured by the traditional Chinese ink painting, mesmerized by the fact that brilliant exponents through history realised rivetingly inspiring masterworks despite - or because of - the medium's economy of artistic language and its meagre materials: just ink on paper. As the urge to portray his own environment grew, reflecting the times of his age, he was soon attracted to the French Impressionists' flair for capturing the sensations of light and atmospheric mood through the practice of painting on the spot, responding instinctively to the stimulants of the ambience. Thus his ink paintings simultaneously possess the tested nuances of Chinese ink and the fleeting immediacy of Impressionism.
From the point of painterliness, the crux of Tze Peng's ink painting which gives his work its strength is the combination of the linear form and the tonal range. Giving the line priority over the other painterly components - colour, space, mass texture, volume - he succeeds in infusing the line - through relentless practice - with both energy and lyrical power.
Meanwhile, his sharp awareness of the potential of tonality in ink painting comes from his rekindling of a traditional canon in Chinese ink painting which dictates that black Chinese ink mixed with water in varying ratio can throw up an amazing range of five distinct tonalities. The agile line and the versatile tonality ensure an enviable free reign within his repertoire of ink painting which calls fro mobility of expression affecting tension and suggesting space, volume, light and even colours.
Tze Peng's Old Singapore series emerges as a distinct prominent phase in his overall artistic oeuvre. In 1981 when Singapore's urban redevelopment accelerated, Tze Peng, overwhelmed by the apprehension that the Singapore River, Chinatown and the old vicinities they radiate would either be transformed beyond recognition or completed faded away - promptly launched his marathon ink painting blitz through painting for days at a stretch. The locations he painted were more than just cold statistics on a map as they were haunts that he grew up in as a Singaporean, where he spent his Sundays with friends and where he could deeply feel a sense of historical legacy. Depicting the Singapore River, Chinatown, Boat Quay, Clarke Quay, Teochew Market, his collection of Old Singapore paintings came up to over hundreds.
Way beyond dull graphic renditions, these paintings flowed from the artist's vision where imagination, impulses and emotions were involved and where the visual intangibles which escape many - such as the hectic pace of life and history, memory, culture, customs, energy as reflected in the ambience and the architecture - were collectively encapsulated in every singular painting. Yet even as visual documentation, the cast collection of these paintings if reassembled before us will amount to an awe-inspiring visual tapestry which will reconstruct a Singapore of the 1960s to 1980s.
Tze Peng's vast ink painting series on Bali is yet another of his towering visual artistic adventures. For him, the Balinese artistic immersion amounts to no less than yet another sustained involvement in the discovery of the differing facets and layers of human experiences. Tze Peng's Bali is not the exotic Bali that one encounters in travel brochures or in popular imagination. His is a Bali deep in the Balinese homeland where the contact with a moving spiritual community life, the people's religious devotion and their unspoilt values is a sobering even beautiful experience. He painted market scenes, grocer stalls, fishing villages, temples, community gatherings, festivals, dancers, processions and - his favourite - entangled trees.
In one of his most vibrant and vivid ink works, Tze Peng with characteristic calligraphic fleeting touches created a composition of a Balinese festival, captivating its enthralling atmospheric mood.
The drama involved in the evolution of Tze Peng's Chinese calligraphy art is intriguing. Moving from phase to phase in the hierarchy of the traditional Chinese calligraphy from the conventional scripts to the more abstract running script - accompanied by the theories on calligraphy, Tze Peng went through a tormented period - lasting a few years - to unlock the dynamics of truly stunning calligraphy. An important part of this process was to study assiduously the great masterworks which lined the history of Chinese calligraphy from Han to Tang dynasties, from the Ming dynasty to contemporary era.
The outcome: an overhaul of his calligraphic practice in terms of the calligraphy structures, proportions, balance and scale and the spatial dynamics, with scarcely any guiding rules. The transformation was stunning. Boldness and vigour, energy and variation characterize Tze Peng's current calligraphy works. Invariably in large formats with imposing scale, the calligraphy nevertheless possesses unity and compactness which give the works an impact. Plunging into his work with aggressive swiftness and decisive ferocity, he injects in the calligraphy invigorating tension. Lately, a new development begins to surface - by varying the weight and density of his calligraphic strokes and by taking chances which randomly arise, his play of white spaces is filled with titillating surprises.
Tze Peng's oil painting which had it debut with his Chinese Junk Series in 1960s emerges intermittently from time to time. Recently, a number of fresh developments show that he is still capable of surprises with unexpected facets of his artistic talent.
While a charming series of spontaneous sketches ink Chinese ink shows Tze Peng's ability to capture the visual sensations of a fast paced city like Paris in the form of small alluring works, it is in his two monumental works in oils - Singapore River 2000 and River Seine (France) 2000 - and his substantial recent Tree series which reveal a new level of artistic maturity, consolidating early strengths, giving the works introspective solidarity and intensity, working in layers towards an inner depth. It is here that we see with obvious clarity how the dynamic forces in Tze Peng's calligraphy art are driving his paintings as well. The tree structures exude the power and impact which are the result of decisive, direct executive of the brushwork.
At 83, Lim Tze Peng's artistic passion is undiminished.
