VISUAL ARTIST - POH SIEW WAH
QUOTATIONS
"I try to evoke Nature's majestic serenity very directly. Direct, because a painting needs no object or superficial beauty. This is a form of distraction, as opposed to abstraction. Directness, honesty and spontaneity are interlinked. Looking at a painting is looking at an artist. It should reveal the artist's total self inside out."
"Through my reading of the Eastern philosophers I gained a deeper understanding of my cultural roots, I was able to divest myself of what I had been taught earlier and to attain peace of mind. In my work I'm trying to express my idea of universal peace and balance, of equality and harmony among men, as opposed to the terrible conflicts that still exist in the world today"
"I was inspired by Andrew Wyeth whose paintings of solitary objects and figures, realistically rendered, evoke such pathos. They have a spirit or meaning beyond their surface representation.....I was intrigued by the surface patterning of rotting walls or doors in the back lanes of Chinatown. They were infinitely more interesting to me than new objects because they had character, texture and meaning acquired through the passage of time, through weathering and usage. They aroused a feeling of indescribable nostalgia in me."
