singapore scenery - Oil Painting

I have to always demonstrate when I teach Western landscape painting, though I am not a master at painting landscapes. While making replicas of other artist's works, I started painting the scenes around me; thanks to COVID-19, I've gotten into the habit of photographing and toying with composition, which are now the basis for my landscape paintings. Anyway, at the end of the course, I expressed my plan to make 50 miniature paintings in the coming year and also urged students to paint more in preparation for any future prospective exhibitions. At first, I would spend three hours each night painting. Over time, my passion grew, and I stayed in the studio longer and later yet still in high spirits until late at night. I am aware this is viewed as addiction, which isn't necessarily fatal, but is bad to the body. This reminds me of my addiction to running; despite extreme discomfort, I kept pushing myself to go farther and cover more ground. Thankfully, I have comple...

I think Fort Canning Hill is the ideal location for capturing the beauty of the island and a hike in the hill always feels good when I'm feeling unmotivated. The hill offers numerous viewpoints; the green trails, the light and shadows necessary for painting, and simply looking down at the surroundings below make you feel little and vulnerable. I also find hills' naturally occurring lower and higher terrain formations appealing, which are typically lacking in flat street scenes. While I still have a number of compositions to work from, I can continue to look for more viewpoints to put together 36 or 72 paintings of Fort Canning Hill. Anyway, as Selegie is close to the hill, I can go for a walk whenever I want.

A morning stroll around Mount Emily Park in Mount Sophia is now an option since moving to the Selegie flat. I also periodically go around Mount Sophia when I want to view the neighborhood and get additional exercise. To get uphill to Mount Emily Park, I can take Sophia Road somewhere around the junction of Selegie Road, then cross over to Wilkie Road to go downhill. By the way, The Istana, the president's official residence and office, is located at the end of the road; when I was a student at the NAFA's San San Campus on Mount Sophia, I used to see guards patrolling the site and I later found out that the President is one of our neighbors. Also, while going around Mount Sophia, I noticed that the streets mostly use English names including Mackenzie Road, Cavengah Road, and Cuppage Road, and so forth. I eventually reach the green space at the entrance to the Istana, where intertwining rain trees provide both a view and shade, after walking east for around 10 minutes from Orchar...

When we were young, a trip to visit my grandma with my mother would excite us a lot. We'd say we were heading to Rochor or downtown. My grandma's house was along Beach Road, and to the east of it was the business district, while to the west, across the street, was the Rochor River, which crosses the Merdeka Bridge before merging with the Kallang and Singapore rivers and flowing into the sea. I have fond recollections of this stretch of the river near the Merdeka Bridge because my father's workplace was close to my grandma's house, he occasionally took us downstairs to the coffee shop for soft drinks and then to the river to play. Like the small fishing villages in neighboring countries are now, the Rochor river was a dusty and chaotic place fifty years ago; a chaotic yet relaxed place where many laborers gathered to make a living from the sea. The most startling aspect was how close the “primitive” toilets were to the river; urine and stools would drop from above and ru...

It was this year that I began painting landscapes, initially to capture the constantly changing clouds. As I painted, the proportion of the sky shrank, and the lovely clouds also shrank. In addition, as I looked through photos to find a suitable composition, I saw that most of them had trees and green grass; I often see these mature old trees in parks or by the roadside as I walk around the city and wonder, “How old is that tree?”. According to statistics, trees take 15 to 80 years to fully grow and then continue to live for a very long time. Every tree also is different, each with its own distinct bends, twisted branches, and lush green leaves. I therefore decided that each painting needed at least one tree. Soon, the paintings became more cool colored, with cobalt violet, viridian, and cerulean blue being the most common. The island is known as a garden city, and I completely agree because Singapore has planted over two million trees in the last 50 years.

Mural painting has recently grown in popularity on the island and is commonly seen as a development of graffiti art, a type of street art that originated in the West in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, Malaysia was where realistically drawn murals initially gained popularity before spreading to Singapore. On my earlier visits to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, I saw people spray-painting graffiti on the walls of vast canals or overpasses; letterings and some simple drawings, including portraits, were accentuated with vibrant spray paint. The same acts, however, were hardly ever seen in Singapore at the time; maybe the authorities had not yet realized the appeal of graffiti art. Furthermore, unauthorized graffiti equated to vandalism, which was punishable. Today, anyone walking down the street can appreciate the island's many wall murals; some have even evolved into landmarks to help people find their ways around. Murals, on the other hand, are more prone to weather damage than...

While walking through Little India in search of breakfast, I find myself passing many back alleys. Some are only accessible by foot, while others are also accessible by car. We try to stay away from back alleys because they are often unpleasant due to junk build-up, unless when photographing old buildings in Little India; many of the buildings date back to the early 20th century and are regarded as island monuments. You can also see engravings of sacred animals, auspicious symbols, and verses on several of the double-storey houses that were once owned by the Peranakan. Recently, we noticed that Desker Road is right in front of the Indian cuisine café where we had our breakfast, an alley which, along with Geylang is infamous for being part of Singapore's red-light districts, and where customer solicitation once stretched throughout the entire back alleyways; I wonder if such acts still take place, considering that streetwalkers are rarely seen out and about these days. Years ago, I ...

. Little India is located to the north of Selegie Road, next to Bukit Timah Road. It is difficult to determine the precise extents, but I can say that it stretches from Farrer Park Fields, behind Race Course Road to the west, Jalan Besar to the east, and Lavender Street to the north, with the famous Serangoon Road running through the middle. Possibly due to traffic direction and our tendency to move clockwise, I always begin my morning walk at Race Course Road or Serangoon Road on the left; sometimes I walk on the main road, sometimes I walk through the passageways, and sometimes I walk through HDB flats. Along this less than a kilometer stretches of Serangoon Road, you can find three huge Hindu temples: the Sri Vadapathira Kaliamman Temple, the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, and the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple; I find it amazing and concerning that these Temples and numerous commercial shophouses are so close to the neighborhood flats. Residents and migrant workers may clash over space...

In 2007, Lasalle relocated from Goodman Road to its new location, which is right across the street from my house. Every day when I open my door, I can see the school, and it just takes me 5 minutes to get there. You should have noticed that the Lasalle building looks like a big black box with many holes in the walls and a canvas top for ventilation. My favorite aspect of the building is its internal design, which features six atypically cut structures in a space that mimics a canyon, allowing people to roam freely. Another amazing feature is its wide opening on the north side, which reminds me of a cave entrance that overwhelms passer-by. One can experience nature even more inside this man-made structure when the wind blows rain into the school compound, and it falls over the sloping floor to the lower ground floor. Even though I no longer teach there, I often pass the building while out and about. I don't recall spending much time on campus outside of classes, but I do recall fr...

Toa Payoh, located in the center of the island, was Singapore's first satellite town after independence. I didn't go there often, except to the HDB when housing issues arose; eventually, my jogging led me to the town two or three times a month, and I gradually became familiar with it. Similar to how Geylang refers to street as "Lorong" rather than "Street" and "Avenue," Toa Payoh's street plan featured a circular road in the center, making it easy for visitors who were unfamiliar with it to get lost. The "Lian Shan Shuang Lin" Monastery, Toa Payoh Park, and other attractions are also well-known in Toa Payoh. But in my opinion, the more notable landmarks are the "side by side" sacred tree and shrine in the Town Central. Although they are not recognized as historical sites, both have witnessed the development of Toa Payoh. You can read more about the tree's urban legend at this link: http://www.beokeng.com/disptemple.php?t...