Tew Nai Tong, who graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore in 1958, has now become an icon in contemporary Malaysian art. An accomplished painter of watercolour and oils, his works depicting rustic scenes and rural life adorn many institutional and private collections.

Tew, who was born in Klang in 1936, went to Paris in 1965 and graduated from L'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in 1967; he later went on a study tour of Europe and U.K. for a year. In the three decades since his return, he painted prolifically, exhibited extensively, taught at a couple of art schools and was instrumental in founding two art bodies, the Malaysian Watercolour Society and the Contemporary Malaysian Water-colourist Association. He was also a vigorous promoter of Malaysian watercolour overseas, leading national delegations to Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.

While his watercolours enjoy higher visibility and renown, Tew Nai Tong feels that his major opus is in the oils. His paintings of tropical landscape, whether of Malaysian or Balinese origin, exude a strong bonding with natural elements that endear themselves to the viewers, His rural scenes, peopled with peasants and fisher folks, are nothing if not magnificent celebrations of the human form. The human figures, juxtaposed on the beach, in plantations and in religious processions, somehow seem to dance through spatial realms of ethereal quality. Looking back at the paintings produced over the years, it is clear that Tew Nai Tong is one of the most prolific and energetic practitioners of the Nanyang (South Seas) style.

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RUSTIC CANVASSES: Tew Nai Tong's Recent Works