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There is no better depiction of innocence than little children at play out in the open kampung, the market or the beach, where worldly entanglements do not exist. This portrait of a sweet little girl gazing right at us seems to have been captured in a fleeting moment when she may have turned and looked at the artist in the midst of her play. Between 1999 to 2003, Kow Leong Kiang scoured villages and beaches in Kelantan and Terengganu for small portrait studies in order to hone his remarkable drawing skills.

Graduated from Kuala Lumpur College of Art in 1991, Kow received Minor Award, Young Contemporaries Malaysia in 1992, National Award, National Day Art Competition, Kuala Lumpur and won the Grand Prize at the Phillip Morris ASEAN Art Awards in 1998 with his controversial painting titled Mr. Foreign Speculator, Stop Damaging Our Country. He was also artist-in-residence at Vermon Studio Centre, U.S.A. in 2004. Kow is best known for his masterful portraits of East Coast beauties, capturing the images of rural beauty.