VISUAL ARTIST - CHEW KIM LIONG
QUOTATIONS
"My early venture into the art of Chinese painting has been influenced by the Shanghai School of Painting, which was founded by great masters such as Wu Changshuo and culminated in the works of his students such as Pan Tianshou and Wang Geyi.
Chen Wen Hsi and Fan Chang Tian, students of Pan and Wang respectively, emigrated to Singapore. I owe much of my initial training to Foo Chee San and Nai Swee Leng , who in turn, were students of Chen and Fan respectively. Under their guidance, I was initiated to delve into the underlying Chinese philosophy and to master the disciplined technique demanded by Chinese painting, in a quest of an accord between heart and hand, from one subject to another starting from bamboo to flowers and birds, and from trees to landscapes."
"Over the years, I have also carried out experiments in blending Eastern and Western ideas with the intense play of various elements and techniques of creating images in my paintings. Such experiments have been further intensified by an opportunity that allowed me to advance also in my academic pursuit in art, in the form of PhD research involving comparative studies of Chinese and European painting, especially the paintings of Zhang Daqian and Pablo Picasso.
With 'Heart and Hand in Accord, Travelling Round the East and the West' as my motto, I have created successfully a unique style in combining calligraphy and painting, mathematics and art, traditional art practices and contemporary art processes. Through my artwork, I pursue a state of 'in between natural figuration and spiritual abstraction'. I seek the Yin Yang harmony of form and spirit, past and present, East and West."
"In my painting, I aim to achieve controlled and yet harmonious splashings of varied Chinese ink and colours, and a rich mix of dry-wet, dispersed-concentrated, bright-dark and light-heavy effects, by using the self-invented technique of 'pigmentising-and-alumising'.
Heavy colour is created from a mixture of colour pigments from mineral and vegetable sources. The surface of my paintings is usually converted into a virtual platform, sometimes unpredictable, on which diverse entities converge, and then diverge to make a picture, fully illustrating the melodious fluctuation between Yin and Yang in the workings of all things."
