LOT 26
ONG KIM SENG
(B. Singapore, 1945)
Bendigo Post Office, 1990
Signed and titled
“ONG KIM SENG BENDIGO” on lower left
Watercolour on paper
38 x 28 cm
Provenance
Private Collection, Singapore
RM 6,000 – RM 9,000
To him, “Art is a continuous journey. There may be pitfalls and times where you get stuck. It is up to one to choose a path and go along with it.”
Today, he is undeniably one of Singapore’s most prolific watercolourists. Accolades aside, he placed Singapore on the world map by being the only Asian artist residing outside of US to be admitted to the American Waterlour Society (‘AWS’).
As a plein-air realist painter, he stays true to his subject-matter, but continues to add an element of intrigue to it by varying the vantage points of his paintings. A fan of nature and traditional architecture, Ong often travels to Bali, Tibet, Nepal, Italy and more, in search of new subject-matter.
As seen in this piece, the Bendigo Post Office is a building on Pall Mall in Bendigo, a provincial city in the Australian state of Victoria, and the artist captures it beautifully with exquisite shadings and hyper-realistic contours.