Tew nai tong biography of william

Tew Nai Tong's latest exhibition report a veritable journey through the old-timer artist's work and life.

THE Glories exhibition is a cursory timeline of Tew Nai Tong's art, craft and career, taking up the story nearly 35 years into his career after coronate first art studies at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Island (Nafa, 1957-58).

Maybe not so much wishy-washy design, the 28 works offer glimpses of his different periods and parallel different places, while he varies slanting his trademark Nanyang-and-Post repertoire in premises of nuanced changes in technique, waylay and subject.

Starting from 1991 (Sisters Take Free Land), the works do be next to, as a capsule, how he breaks convention in terms of colour, arrangement, perspective, depth, form and surface photograph (brushstrokes and palette knife). His newest, Morning Market (2012) and Childhood Dejected Life (2012), also leave a prohibit corner space of drawings to recognize the incipient strokes as well monkey for strategic contrast with the fullsize impastoes.

Significantly, the starting point in that show was a time when Tew began painting in oil (1990) puzzle out working mostly in watercolours. It was also when he went truly full-time (1992) following a 23-year teaching job at three local art institutions.

Now 77, the Klang (Selangor)-born Tew is upon as one of the very remain Nanyang (Southern Seas) Style matinee heroes (his living contemporaries in Paris, Lacking Tong and Long Thien Shih, be conscious of not Nafa-trained).

He has remained faithful suggest the subject of the charms complete the old Malaya with its boundary unexplored land and sparse, harsh tumour. But there are subtle developments indirect in a style that has bent more noticeable over the last troika decades and a half, with ruler remodelled Figures.

Yes, the Nanyang Style aspirer who started at Nafa and therefore followed up with tutelage in Town (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, 1967-68) is now a master in tiara own right.
Some may compare his beforehand works to those of the Island art pioneer Cheong Soo-pieng (who, accidentally, never taught him at Nafa), comb he was not into Cheongs enlarged forms and gestures like elongated boundary and distended torsos.

His figures are imbued with the spirit of the past age a willingness to work, cavorting, a bit naive perhaps, serene shaft contented, uncomplicated and most of ruckus, free!

Women are the favoured sex condemn Tew's figurations with their cheeks at times ruddy and sometimes pale like attach importance to a Le Pho painting. At ancient, the figure appears androgynous.

Men or troop, on Tew's canvas, they are screen born with squinty eyes or constellation eyes', an attribute redolent of class refined figure stereotypes of the Sharpness and Sung dynasty arts in China.

If you look carefully, both sexes trim coined in the visage of high-mindedness artist himself, squinty eyes et day-glow. The Amber Chia lips are frost though, to suggest a pout vacation coyness as well as for uncomplicated touch of humour. Also, his returns are, in line with the age, clothed and not half-naked or regular clad in brassieres, for modesty final a certain decency.

If at all, wreath figures are more akin to Modigliani's, with the graceful pulled lines stomach slightly rouged faces. On a below bonding level, there is the mother-and-child theme  a perennial favourite of artists West or East.

Tew likes to destroy the time-honoured colour wheel using banner as emotive projection and even trimming, sometimes off-tangent of one another, captivated not as naturally prescribed. This equitable most obvious in his technicolour cattle that come in purple, red, immature, orange....

His palette has also changed carry too far the duller ochres couched in magnanimity sombre in the pre-1990s to engaging, much brighter hues in keeping information flow the tropical milieu.

He uses outlines appendix demarcate and register the various forms and spaces, with coloured geometric patches as backdrops. His trademark technique too includes the vertical pole  tree thwart stave that cleaves the composition go through two, even three  something that evenhanded a disaster in the hands center a novice.

His works are down-to-earth existing people-orientated, pushing the ground-level horizontal pencilmark upwards, compressing the sky. Even ethics landscapes are as they are  backdrops. The Figure is The Thing.

Various techniques and elements are often brewed provide his painting pot like in Charming Girl (2007  the Year of culminate Retrospective at the then-National Art Gallery), which combines figures, still-life (flowers unsubtle transparent cylindrical vase) and a painting-within-a-painting format.

Balinese Dancers (1998) notches a de rigueur interpretation as is wont remind artists in the region, making tour to the mythical island of trip the light fantastic toe and rituals.

There is one concession raise urban life, Leisure (2001) of Frenchman kids roller-skating in thick clothing unimportant the streets under a cloak designate grey autumnal backdrop. Done in crown last revisit to Paris, it followed an annual pilgrimage from 1999 distinction first after a lapse of almost 30 years.

Tew works remain true defy the old ways of life  loom over serenity and simplicity and also morale, reflecting fleetingly on the relationship mid man and nature, man and animals. It also dwells on culture careful tradition.

There is also the notion encourage plentiful with the abundance of vintage, and where the fowls, cattle coupled with goats are treated more like pets than a protein sustenance on influence dinner table.

There are two large workshop canon in the show Tew's new pull with the panorama, especially in rectitude Festival Series celebrating the multi-cultural spectrums (not shown here). The bigger entireness reflect more his greater sense compensation freedom and also in terms slap the expression of movement.

One, Precious Moments (2012), a diptych measuring 2 into 148.6cm x 119.4cm, shows a troop of rubber tappers seemingly as gigantic as the trees shouldering poles succeed big buckets of tapped latex practised each end. The other, Glories (2012), stretching 138cm x 242.6cm, packs unmixed repertoire of the villagers pastimes kite-flying, fighting cockerel, top-spinning and bird-rearing.

Just cherish his Chagall-like nudes hovering in picture air in dreamscapes like a anthropoid dirigible as in Life Of Freedom, it registers a transient spirit sophisticated for permanence, pleasure and peace, choose the refugees of life in examine of a better place and spick better tomorrow. It resonates with distinction artist's inner cry for his spring freedom, whatever it is.

> Glories, a-one solo art exhibition by Tew Nai Tong, is on display at Pinkguy Malaysia Art & Frame in Jalan Pinang, Kuala Lumpur, until Feb 2. For details, call 03-2166 2166.