THE ARTIST PROFILE OF NG FOO CHEONG
By Marybeth Ramey THE EXPAT http://www.expatkl.com/
Our cover artist this month refers to his paintings as “borderless creations.” I like that phrase, especially when you stop and focus on exactly what is a borderless anything.
And he places a lot of faith in the inherent creative intelligence of his audience.
Ng Foo Cheong believes it is in the painting itself that lie the clues for people to articulate the messages he is attempting to get across.
For the past 25 years, Ng has been a painter in the genre of abstract expressionism and also a ceramics artist. His trademark is to create an abstract representation of the physical world using visual interpretations based on dominant colours, lines and forms of varying degrees. He then lets the viewer construe their own interpretations of his not quite finalised strokes of colour and the placement of shapes. He is so confident of the viewer’s ability to do justice to his visions that he takes care not to heavily influence their flights into imagination. Therefore, he is willing to let the painting ‘be’ as presented in its uncompleted form.
So what is the catalyst that serves Ng? He tells me it comes from his own emotions. His emotions give him his own creative inspiration that he then easily transfers to the canvas using his specially prepared oils. There is no doubting his masterful skill of composition, as ‘incomplete’ as he professes the paintings to be. For me it is the striking asymmetry that is intriguing and fires up my own imagination. The blistering colours are not quite balanced when formed into shapes. His tendency to place two or four shapes outside the periphery of the dominant much larger nucleus figure adds to the element of spatial disorganisation that is just enough to tantalise. They certainly draw attention to the centre shape, since the eye is fighting against its natural impulses to look at individual components within the picture, once the entirety is taken in at a glance.
What does the human mind naturally perceive when initially confronted by a few square meters of colours, lines, shapes and space? A myriad of perceptions and complexities that are infinite he explains. But it is in our own unique consciousness that we are endowed with a singular ability to interpret the illogicalness into a logical thought and then into a line of coherent reasoning. From that solid reasoning, then the imagination can take over and allow our own inspired visions and concepts to come to the fore.
The paintings are aesthetically pleasing above all. The shiny glimmering sparkles grazing the surfaces on some of the shapes give them extra dimension that is simply visually pleasing even to the casual onlooker.
He is a graduate of the KL College of Art as are so many of Malaysia’s finest artists and gives due credit to the honing of his skills and talent back to his instructors at the College.
Ng has widely exhibited his work including a well remembered, prestigious event at the 1998 APEC Business Summit titled, “The Journey of Malaysian Art”. He started to show outside of Malaysia in 1999 when he was selected to represent Malaysia in the famed Windsor @ Newton World-Wide Millennium Painting Competition in London. He has since continued his forays into varying modes of expression using his artistic talent, including his highly regarded mastery as a ceramics artist.
By Marybeth Ramey THE EXPAT http://www.expatkl.com/
Our cover artist this month refers to his paintings as “borderless creations.” I like that phrase, especially when you stop and focus on exactly what is a borderless anything.
And he places a lot of faith in the inherent creative intelligence of his audience.
Ng Foo Cheong believes it is in the painting itself that lie the clues for people to articulate the messages he is attempting to get across.
For the past 25 years, Ng has been a painter in the genre of abstract expressionism and also a ceramics artist. His trademark is to create an abstract representation of the physical world using visual interpretations based on dominant colours, lines and forms of varying degrees. He then lets the viewer construe their own interpretations of his not quite finalised strokes of colour and the placement of shapes. He is so confident of the viewer’s ability to do justice to his visions that he takes care not to heavily influence their flights into imagination. Therefore, he is willing to let the painting ‘be’ as presented in its uncompleted form.
So what is the catalyst that serves Ng? He tells me it comes from his own emotions. His emotions give him his own creative inspiration that he then easily transfers to the canvas using his specially prepared oils. There is no doubting his masterful skill of composition, as ‘incomplete’ as he professes the paintings to be. For me it is the striking asymmetry that is intriguing and fires up my own imagination. The blistering colours are not quite balanced when formed into shapes. His tendency to place two or four shapes outside the periphery of the dominant much larger nucleus figure adds to the element of spatial disorganisation that is just enough to tantalise. They certainly draw attention to the centre shape, since the eye is fighting against its natural impulses to look at individual components within the picture, once the entirety is taken in at a glance.
What does the human mind naturally perceive when initially confronted by a few square meters of colours, lines, shapes and space? A myriad of perceptions and complexities that are infinite he explains. But it is in our own unique consciousness that we are endowed with a singular ability to interpret the illogicalness into a logical thought and then into a line of coherent reasoning. From that solid reasoning, then the imagination can take over and allow our own inspired visions and concepts to come to the fore.
The paintings are aesthetically pleasing above all. The shiny glimmering sparkles grazing the surfaces on some of the shapes give them extra dimension that is simply visually pleasing even to the casual onlooker.
He is a graduate of the KL College of Art as are so many of Malaysia’s finest artists and gives due credit to the honing of his skills and talent back to his instructors at the College.
Ng has widely exhibited his work including a well remembered, prestigious event at the 1998 APEC Business Summit titled, “The Journey of Malaysian Art”. He started to show outside of Malaysia in 1999 when he was selected to represent Malaysia in the famed Windsor @ Newton World-Wide Millennium Painting Competition in London. He has since continued his forays into varying modes of expression using his artistic talent, including his highly regarded mastery as a ceramics artist.
