030

AWARD
Winner of One of Three Malaysian Watercolour Society 1984 Awards

ILLUSTRATED
Malaysian Watercolour Society catalogue, 1984

LITERATURE
The World of Chang Fee Ming (Essay: Ooi Kok Chuen, Edited by Garrett Kam, 1995)
The Visible Trail of Chang Fee Ming (Text by Christine Rohani Longuet/Chang Fee Ming, 2000)

This represents Chang Fee Ming’s first major award-winning piece, as one of the three winners of the Malaysian Watercolour Society 1984 Awards, the other winners being Cheah Ewe Hoon and Chiang Soa Ling. The award came with a pewter plate and a RM500 cash prize. Chang won the award again in 1985.

In the artistic development of Fee Ming’s oeuvre, this is a seminal work that hints at the beginning of the artist using batik motifs as the main theme and thrust of his later more mature works. The work of sarungs hanging by the rafters, showing its intricate patterns and colours of Nusantara, was his favourite theme of paintings on Terengganu in the years when he first started out.

This work is played out in geometric cells of horizontal parallels on the eaves and on the waist-high enclosure plank stilt house. A side drama of a mother bathing a child on top of a staircase fills the triangle on the right.From here, Fee Ming went on to develop his signature style where batik motifs become the dominant feature in his paintings, and gained him much accolades and recognition in his career as an artist.