Lot 27 | 28 November 2021

Ong Kim Seng’s ‘Teochew Street, Chinatown Singapore, 1997’ is the exquisite rendition of a street in Singapore, in the 1970’s, portraying the artist’s masterful skill and immaculate detailing. From the heritage buildings to the antics of people walking about, Ong Kim Seng does it all with style. Ong Kim Seng is an internationally acclaimed water-colourist who has mastered the manipulation of darks in order to give his paintings a luminous glow hence the depth of his paintings. Merging concepts with finesse of execution, the artist presents representative images which are also ethereal in their beauty, flawless in their elemental flow and appropriation of light. The self-taught artist has garnered multiple accolades, including the Cultural Medallion in 1990 and seven awards by the American Watercolour Society.

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.” As an en 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.