三城记 = A tale of three cities

• Main Author: Ng, Woon Lam
• Other Authors: School of Art, Design and Media
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Ng Woon Lam 2020
• Subjects: Visual arts and music::Visual arts; Watercolour; Paintings
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/137117
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Quoting from 2 ‘Letter to the amateur painters by Russian Artist Khrapkovskii’, “An artist with every bit of his/her talent wholeheartedly exerts his/her energy in the art making process through pouring of his/ her emotion, will, thoughts, experience and observation.” This is truly my most preferred approach in my creating work. If I were to just approach my research according to technical approaches used by historians or scientists, many of my creative components in visual art forms might not be presented well. Art presentation requires higher level of freedom that sometimes is against logical approaches. Therefore I made a decision to proceed with a methodology that is closer to a creative process. I hope readers could benefit from or be inspired through my documentation here. Singapore, Penang and Malacca, the historical cities of straits were selected as my 1st academic research locations because of their historical values. In additional, I am personally more familiar with their historical and cultural backgrounds. Being the 3 major trading hubs of the Malacca straits since early days of Malaya peninsular history (around AD1500), all tree cities served as the hubs for exchange of culture with external parties from the East and West. There is a good connection between the heritage assets of the 3 cities. Since Malacca and Georgetown are elected as UNESCO heritage cities, Singapore could benefit through good in-depth study of its historical sister cities to regain some of its lost assets. In addition, I hope to inspire fellow artists for more cultural exchange between these 3 cities through my research and creative work. Learning from my last exhibition ‘Live & Alive’, this time I started through participating in Penang Urban Sketchers’ drawing and sketching invitation trip. I first used photography as an initial medium searching for inspiring content. Thereafter, I travelled to both Malacca and Penang a few more times and worked in large format oil paintings and watercolors on location. Although it was a great challenge working large format artworks on location, richer content could be presented. Besides, I was taking the challenge as an opportunity for new discovery. As I have sufficient time set aside for this project, I was able to carry out more in depth visual research as well as conceptual study that in turn allowed me to resolve some long-term doubts I had had. The results and working process reassured my objective as an individual working in the creative field. Drawing, sketching and large format painting on location served as good approaches to collect rich visual information. Therefore these would serve as my presentation materials combining with some related photographic images and personal thought. With the combination, I hope readers could relate the research content through a wider perspective and hence could they be brought with more possibilities.