Ong Kim Seng, the 1990 Cultural Medallion awardee, is a self-taught watercolour artist who has won several awards from the American Watercolor Society, achieving the excellent Dolphin Awards several times. He is the only watercolour artist who has exhibited at the United Nations in New York , arranged by Professor Tommy Koh in 1982. Sought after as a jurist in international competitions, his works are collected by world dignitaries. He is among one of the world's best 20 watercolorists, together with John Salminen, Joseph Zbukvic, Alvaro Castinet, Atanur Dogan, Liu Yi, Stanislaw Zoladz and others.
He is indeed a master of lights and shadows and his landscape paintings, with its inimitable strokes, never never fail to mesmerise the viewer with its freshness and brilliance, whether it is a marine landscape, urban landscape , nature or any other themes. His landscape paintings include the most rustic local scenes as well as those in Bali, Nepal, Tibet, China, Burma, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and other countries.
I have inserted here 3 of his landscape paintings, one a marine landscape, another an urban scene and the third, a nature study; and the last one is my own portrait painting of him , embodying all these that I have learned in my years under his tutelage: composition, tonal values, light and shadows and that realistic personal touch.
-
Yusoff Abdul Latiff