Singaporean Artist's Versatility on Display

Cheong focuses on life in the countryside 

Also at the National Gallery Singapore was an exhibition on artist Cheong Soo Pieng (1917-1983) who used several different mediums in his art. This particular show, Cheong Soo Pieng: Layer by Layer, wanted to demonstrate his artistic process, and that things would change from the initial sketch on the canvas to the finished product.

Abstract II could be a landscape

This is not new -- artists have always worked and reworked their paintings to get the composition right or started over with something else. We can discover this thanks to X-ray scans, infrared photography, and even microscopic analysis to give us a better understanding of artists' work and thought process.

Cheong's paintings are figurative, and the paintings shown are mostly when he and fellow artists travelled to Bali in Indonesia in 1952 and later in the 1970s. He made numerous sketches that became the basis of several paintings. They are rustic countryside scenes of farmers working in the fields, a boy lying on a buffalo's back, and mothers looking after their babies.

The figurative style becomes three-dimensional in Singapore Scenery, where he coated a wooden board with a layer of resin and then fixed thin copper strips to create shapes kind of like stained glass. Resin was then poured between the copper strips to form layers and brilliant colours in yellow, brown and red.

Singapore Scenery uses resin and copper strips

He also made some multimedia pieces. One called Abstract II uses painted and shaped aluminium sheets, zing plated iron rods, and metal tacks mounted on a board. It looks like a three-dimensional collage that could be interpreted as a landscape or an organic form. 

Another painting called Landscape was made on jute, a fibre made from coarse threads. He took the jute and mounted it on canvas to create more texture in the work. The composition of the painting evokes Song dynasty ink paintings with the meticulously painted landscape, though the topless women in the painting featured prominently in the foreground are from Southeast Asia.

This ink painting is made on jute

Cheong's various styles reveal his versatility and interest in experimenting with different mediums. The one using resin and copper wire is impressive and tedious, but he is determined all the same.