Remembering Tan Choon Ghee in Ink and Watercolour

By Ooi Kok Chuen

August 2017 PENANG PALETTE
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Penang State Art Gallery receives its largest bequest ever from his widow, Madam Kam.A rare 1961 self-portrait captures Penang’s legendary watercolourist Tan Choon Ghee (Chen Cun-yi) as a strapping 31-year-old, his gaze intent and his eyes beady. He shows a nondescript steely resolve, as if he were facing phantom imponderables.The work, perhaps his only self-portrait, was honed after the rigours of the Slade School of Art, London (1957-1959), and the locally skewed curriculum of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art...

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Ooi Kok Chuen

is an art-writer and journalist, and the author of MAHSURI: A Legend Reborn (Ooi Peeps Publishing), an adult contemporary fantasy “movel” (a novel conceived as a mock movie) spun from a local legend.


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