Jee Yuan Lim – My Art Journey

Published on Nil | by https://issuu.com

My art journey

I remembered that as a young child, one of my favourite pastimes was browsing through the tiny A6-sized Chinese comics at a corner in Foch Avenue in Kuala Lumpur. The comics were rented out from a stall run by an old woman.

I would sit on a small stool of roughly 3 inches in height and would spend hours browsing through the comics of Chinese folklore like “Water Margin”, “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” and the likes. Not understanding Chinese, I would marvel at the wonderful artworks in the comics, all done in black brush strokes and bring them home to ask my parents to narrate the stories to me. Those were the most memorable moments in my childhood.

They stirred my childhood ambitions of becoming an artist. At school, I was more interested in art than studies and dabbled at the school Art Club and even managed to sell a few paintings at Frank Sullivan’s Samat Art Gallery at the AIA Building in KL.

I was selected to attend a short art course run by Yeoh Jin Leng at the STTI (Specialist Teachers Training Institute) and attended art tuition with Chia Yu Chian at Selangor Mansion. These were stopped because my parents could not afford the fees. That was my only art training.

But having pragmatic Chinese parents plus the then undeveloped art market, I chose to study architecture, something I thought could earn me a living and closely related to art. I enrolled in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) studying Housing, Building and Planning. No painting then since studies took priority. Graduated but did not join any architecture firm.

Instead I did research on traditional Malay Houses that I studied about in USM.

Wrote a book entitled “The Malay House: Rediscovering Malaysia’s Indigenous Shelter System” in1987. Reprinted in 1991 and 1997. Sold 10,000 copies. Also did the photography, layout and drawings in the book. It took me a long 8 years to finish the book. The research took me around the whole of the peninsula and I really began to appreciate our local culture, habitat and local ways of seeing and solving problems.

After the book, nothing really eventful in art happened, except that I was honing my skills in book production. My artistic ambition was in the back-burner, only dabbled in it occasionally, often with dry spells lasting decades. Have to “cari makan” to bring up my kids.

It was until my eldest enrolling in architecture that really took me back to my journey in art in 2016. Thought I had to brush up literally, my painting skills, to teach my daughter who was going into architecture school. I failed to teach her, parent-child teaching is often impossible because of many reasons like setting too high standards by the child and fear of failure, could be some reasons. So I had to send her to the art school for classes.

But my failure to teach became a blessing. It took me into a journey of self-discovery and self-learning. Self-learning, I think, is the best way of learning as one plods on, makes many mistakes, discovers why things work and don’t work, finds out about the theory of colours, composition, lines, textures, materials and so many things. So enjoyable and enlightening and you will remember every mistake or success you did.

You see the works of others also and learn. Not to copy directly. But learn their secrets through their principles and why they do the things they do, and develop your own painting style.

You follow and yet not follow. You are on your own and create your own. The learning and experimentation never ends. The learning ends only when life ends.

My favourite artists are many and they inspire me in different ways. Their drawing skills, strokes, use of colours, composition, approaches, philosophy of painting and ways of interpreting different subjects have all taught me tremendously.

Paul Hogarth, Earl Thollander and David Gentleman who are artists who also illustrated books rank as my favourites for their tremendous drawing skills, architectural and spatial expression, and decorative skills. Not forgetting Don Kingmen (Chinese in US) in the same vein but even more colourful and decorative.

Among the Chinese artists are Cheng Shifa, Lee Man Fong, Chan Kou On who all have the oriental flavour and flair fused with western art.

Of course the Penang doyen of watercolour, Tan Choon Ghee and my fellow urban sketchers and artists like Khoo Cheang Jin , Ch’ng Kiah Kiean, Alex Leong and Lee Eng Beng. Also Victor Chin, they have all inspired me.

I am a member of Penang Urban Sketchers, committee member of the Penang Watercolour Society, and member of the Penang Art Society. Had participated in several group shows, a small solo at the Malaysian-German Society in Penang and most recently invited to take part in the South East Asia Watercolour Exhibition 2020 organised by the National Art Gallery.

My journey continues and hopefully I will continue to learn, grow and develop my vision, ideas, and approaches, and expand my horizons whether in techniques, media, concepts or simply the act of painting. My journey in art as in life is probably more enjoyable than my destination.