LOT 60
FUNG YOW CHORK
(B. China, 1918-2013)
Fishing Village, 1993
Signed and dated “Yow Chork 93” on lower left
Oil on canvas
39.5 x 49.5 cm
Provenance
Private Collection, Kuala Lumpur
SOLD – 5,040
“The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its consciousness.” – Fung Yow Chork
On a dark, cloudy day or perhaps sometime around the evening, the artist captured this spectacular and rare moment. Highly nostalgic and filled with depth, the fishermen’s village is quiet, dank and still with boats moored at the riverbank with sightings of a few fishermen. It is a piece that will make the viewer feel many things deep in the soul, a need for escape and tranquility. The clouds roll, and the blue boats sway ever so slightly, as fishermen finally get ready to retire for the night.
Fung Yow Chork had a penchant for going on outdoor-painting trips where he would favour the most abandoned and recluse of places to paint the most stunning of landscapes.
Fung Yow Chork was a self-taught artist whose family moved to Singapore in 1933. He befriended Professor Zhong Bai-mu, who was a professor at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. He used to paint during holidays and every Sunday, before holding his first exhibition in 1981 at the Chin Woo Art Gallery. Fung Yow Chork was only 13 when he picked up the finer points in art from an artist in China who had studied Impressionism in Japan.