Three times in the past my canvases were among scores of others given prominence in the National Art Gallery (NAG) in Kuala Lumpur.
Most of the paintings were by established artists who were among the ‘Who is Who’ in the Malaysian Art Scene. Only mine and a few others fell into the novice category.
These were the NAG exhibitions of 1976, 1977 and 1978. But it was the 20th Anniversary of Malaysian Independence Exhibition in 1977 that remains intact in my heart. After all I did not go to KL with the intention of attending in 1976 and 1978.
Early in the morning of the exhibition in 1977, four of us started our journey by car, a very beautiful and sporty Colt Gallant belonging to Unversiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Fine Arts’ Painting and Drawing lecturer Dr Lim Eng Hooi, then aged 30. Lim was our driver whereas our Design lecturer Dr (later Prof.) Chew Teng Beng, then 39, took to the spare driver’s seat while Mulok Saban (then Fine Arts Second Year student) and I (then Fine Arts Third Year student) were in the back seat.
All of us were eager to see our paintings being given the honour to be exhibited in the country’s most prominent art gallery, our own equivalent of the New York Art Museum and the London Art Museum. Mulok and I had one painting each entered for the exhibition whereas Lim had two and Chew three.
By the time we were done with the ferry trip to Butterworth, across the Penang Island, it was around 8.00am. Penang Bridge was to come almost another decade later.
It was my third trip to KL by car from Penang, the first one being in 1975 when we visited Parliament Building and the National Museum.
Our 1977 trip went well until a stretch of road after Taiping junction where Lim’s Colt Gallant emitted smokes from the bonnet necessitating us to stop on the left side. The problem was ascertained to be a leaking hose and after few stops to fill in the heated radiator with water we managed to reach Ipoh before lunchtime.
It took no less than an hour or so for the mechanic to fix the car. From Ipoh to KL it would normally take just a few hours only but because of the car problem, by the time we reached KL it was around nine in the evening and as such we were not able to go to NAG to view our exhibited paintings as the place closed at six.
“This seems like ‘jai burung’ (bad omen),” I told Mulok which he nodded in agreement and we discussed no farther.
Tired and disoriented we checked in a hotel called Sentosa Hotel at Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman. Lim and Chew shared a room while Mulok and I shared a room too as well as the RM16.80 charge for a night stay – years later I found out the hotel was a popular accommodation choice for the likes of Tun Jugah, Joseph Unting and other Iban MPs and aristocrats. We showered and went to a nearby stall to do justice to our complaining tummies before retiring for the night. Our plan was to reach NAG early the next day.
After a hearty breakfast we dropped by Samad Gallery, run by Chew’s friend, a British national en route to the NAG. But as I had said to Mulok the night before, my ‘jai burung’ opinion came true when Chew’s friend at Samad Gallery showed the day’s copy of The Strait Echo – now defunct – carrying an article that his (Chew’s) father had died in a car crash late in the previous and offering no further detail.
Shocked and sad we abandoned plan to go to NAG and decided to go back straight away albeit slowly as Lim’s elegant Colt Gallant was not 100 per cent fit to run its usual speed.
Had it not happened 40 years ago, Chew would have been able to know some details of his father’s demise just by the technological advancement of the present era. But then because the late Chew senior was just recently out of hospital for minor complaints Chew couldn’t help not to point fingers at the doctors and nurses of the hospital for irresponsibly discharging him. Chew’s theory was that his father was still not well and therefore was not fit to drive. None of us offered any view other than our sympathy.
“I had purchased two lots next to each other for dad and mom each costing RM780 at the Penang Chinese Cemetery here,” Chew said adding that his mom was still healthy at the age of around 60 then. His father was around the same age, he offered.
By the time we reached his residence in Penang, it was around 8.00pm. Mulok and I paid respect to a deceased for the first time using the joss sticks. When Chew’s wife served us simple dinner, he told the husband that Chew Senior drove his (Dr Chew’s) sports car a Triumph convertible that went out of control and hit a tree. So in actual fact, Dr Chew lost both his father and the sports car.
The ‘jai burung’ caused all of us not to view the exhibition especially to see the price tags for our paintings allocated by NAG. We only found out very much later that the price range was between RM3,000 and RM10,000. Since Mulok and I received no notification of any sale, our paintings might as well be forgotten. Mine was entitled ‘Dance of the Immortal 3’ and done in the tradition of Willem De Kooning and Post Impressionism. I was of the opinion that it was probably given the cheapest tag of RM3k but Mulok thought both of our pieces should deserve more.
Nevertheless, due to the bad omen we had no way to find out. As such I missed all three exhibitions in NAG where my paintings were on show as aforesaid.
Doing abstracts aren’t as easy as people think. There are no rules, no guidelines. You aren’t striving to make the picture look like something. It’s all down to personal taste.
I was a voracious reader and continued to devour books and monographs on artists from Monet to Manet to Van Gogh to Dali to Picasso; from De Kooning to Pollock; from Rembrandt to Degas. Out of curiosity I also compared Leonardo Da Vinci and Churchill and took some interests in Warhol not to mention our own top Malaysian artists at that time such as Syed Ahmad Jamal, Latiff Mohidin, Sulaiman Esa and others. I was very close to Redza Piyadasa and knew every bit about his works. The more I read, the more I became aware that however talented an artist might be, it was the industry and dedication that ultimately marked out the few who succeeded from the many who failed. This could or would inspire many to work harder. I was lazy by nature but was lucky enough to outshine those who burnt midnight candles.
For the record, Prof. Chew Teng Beng was born in 1938 and is probably the most qualified artist in the country with a PhD in Fine Arts from New York University.
Upon his recommendation I was offered a RLKA (Rancangan Latihan Kakitangan Akademik – Academic Staff Training Programme) to be a Sculpture tutor in Fine Arts Department of USM in 1985 (six years after graduation) en route to a PhD in Fine Arts from University of Hawaii. I rejected the offer for various reasons. May be it was also part of the ‘jai burung’ jinx.
