ARTI4

There will be an opening of a show featuring recent paintings by 4 artists including yours truly. Do join us at ARTI Gallery in Desa Melawati on the 22nd of September 2011, Thursday at 8pm. See you there!

Those were the days

I have come across some old slides of my paintings from a student years 10 years back (10 years..... like it was last month) and it was all for the final year assessment. The famous 'Degree Show'. Looking back at it, I can say that I'm proud of myself because of the amout of persistence and preparation in the making of these works are absurd. I can't even believe I could be that patience now. It was 'image-making' process that makes my sanity intact. I always interested in how images are made. The 'close'st relevant reference that i can get to is of course the great Chuck Close, a photo-realist portrait painter. So basically my final year project was about his technique and how it can be applied to images other than portraits. I'm relieved that I didn't go over the formalistic compound when I presented it as opposed to explaining the meaning behind the paintings that will end up screwing my main intention. For academic requirement, students should be able came out with an artist statement. So I came out with simply ...'we need certain distance to be able to see something'... and name all of my paintings 'Imaging-#' which is how this blog name came about.

Among these works are the earlier phase of my final year which focused on image of an animals, gridded and determine the collective colour on each boxes. A sort of reverse-engineer process of computerized pixelation. A great help to learn about how things work. This work end up missing.

Imaging-5
Oil on canvas
2000


The later phase of the year, I tried to eliminate the single object dominance of an image that would've been a 'give away' to the spectator. So I chose to paint an image of a landscape. The first one I did was a smaller piece, probably less than 2'x3', but it took me a month to finished it and the one that amazed me. Sadly this work end up being stolen right after the exhibition is over. If anybody seen it somewhere, please get in touch.

Imaging-3
Oil on canvas
2001


Imaging-4
Oil on canvas
2001


The rest of it are rather large 5'x5' paintings. One goes to the obligatory collection of UiTM's Art & Design Faculty Gallery. All of these original paintings are not with me now. All I have left is their images...... if you can call that ironic.

Imaging-2
Oil on canvas
2001

Imaging-1
Oil on canvas
2001

More D.I.Ys (8 x 10 camera)

I remember when I was younger, toys and action figures has been phenomenon since there were flocks of good cartoons those days such as Thundercats, Silverhawks, Ghostbusters etc. I was about 8-9 when toy companies came out with alluring advertisment. The only toy I had was Jack Hammer from the cartoon M.A.S.K. which was a prize I got from a Trebor contest. The rest, from Starcom to Ninja turtles with parachute, I did it myself.

Till these days, being sort of photo junkie although my equipments is fairly basic, I envied those who got bagful of gizmos and gadgets. It'll make my life so much easier with those but then it also makes me less thinking about progressing. Anyways, my latest project I've done recently was building a large format camera with full tilt & shift capability. There's still lacking here and there but it works fine for my way of using it. My first attempt was a self portrait below. It'll be hard to focus a subject when the subject is behind the camera. So these are some of the pictures took with my DIY 8x10. I just love the super shallow depth it can produce. Great for portraits.

Kembara Life Drawing UiTM Melaka June 2011

Managed to do 2 drawings for 2 lighting of the day

Rohaizad Shaari doing landscape

Model Sitting

Amron Omar with his oil pastel

Having a vanity moment with the model

Amron Omar giving a brief talk about techniques of drawing

Yusri, the gallery owner receiving a souvenir for the program

Recently I was asked to join in a 'Live Drawing' road trip to UiTM Melaka branch by ARTI Gallery. It was in Sg. Petani Kedah before this. The trip brought some prominent visual artists in Malaysia namely Amron Omar - a leading figure artist, Rohaizad Shaari - a watercolor artist recently did his 3rd solo at ARTI Gallery, Rosli Mat - a portrait artist who has spent his career as resident artist in 'Fantasi' Magazine in the 90's. The trip is a joint collaboration of ARTI Gallery and UiTM to get back to basic of drawings and gives the students an eye opener. The gallery planned to do a tour around Malaysia and thus to nurture a vast talents in youngsters specifically.

Shoot with Search

Cool week! Got a chance to shoot with the legendary rock band 'Search'! Awesome dudes. Thanks to brother Nasir, bassist extraordinaire for his warm welcome although it's not part of their schedule and to all the living legends, Amy, Din, Kid and Yazid for their hospitalities. You guys the best! To Kirin, arigato....

Beautiful People

Imagine
Acrylic on canvas
36"x36"

The Golden Book
Acrylic on canvas
42"x54"

There will be an art exhibition held at Core Design Gallery in Subang Jaya themed 'Beautiful People' on the 5th December 2010 at 8pm. This group exhibition comprises a work by 11 artists including yours truly^^. Besides the exhibition, visitors will be entertained by small laid back music performance. Its NOT going to be boring so see you there!!

This exhibition will be on until 22nd Dec 2010
Core Design Gallery
87, Jalan SS15/2A Subang Jaya
47500, Selangor, Malaysia
(Opposite of Carrefour Subang Jaya)
Tel : 03-56334348 (Sue)

Another take on Pulau Besar

Alright!
Now that I have done my part on the Pulau Besar Museum, I can relax. It's time to get some more insight on the mystery of Pulau Besar. It's like a teaser before the Museum are actually open to public. Be sure to check it out.

Batu Belah

We'll start with the mystery of this unique looking stone called Batu Belah. No, it's not from the folklore where the stone eats up human. This stone was located in the middle of Pulau Besar on its highest peak. It was a stone broken into two and the distance was not far between each other. The stone with its height of 3 metres had a width of 35 cm crack in the middle and 5 metres depth. There are 3 version of stories regarding the origin of this stone. But the most interesting was about a group of warriors and heroes showing off their own skills and talents. There was one who split the stone at one shot. A man named Panglima Hitam, took up the challenge by showing off his credibility by splitting the stone using his tongue. Ladies...^^.

Gua Yunus

Now we're going to a cave called Gua Yunus. From the local community sources, this cave was previously a living place of Syeikh Yunus. He was described as an aloof Sufi.Once a week,he would come to the local populated area to get his food supply. However, at some point, he was no longer seen on this island.

This situation raised a question mark amongst his friends and the local community. They finally went to the cave to search for him but found out that he was no longer around. It was interesting to note that the stone on which he used to sit had turned white. This was obvious because the stones found in the cave were all black. Various speculations had been made by the local people about his missing.

After he was gone, the cave was put up as a hermitage place for those who wished to learn certain knowledge. It was uncertain whether the knowledge learnt was based on Islamic laws or contrary to them. What captured our interest until now was the mystery and uniqueness of one particular white stone found in the cave.

Tempayan Pecah

This well was closely associated with the event of nenek kebayan who advised her seven children to water her flowery plants and herbs while she went out in search of roots. But it was only performed by her youngest child. Nenek Kebayan advised that the watering process should be performed by taking freshwater using pail from the well and collecting them in the crock. When the crock was full then only they can be used to water the plants.To make the task easier, the youngest child had disobeyed her mother.

As her youngest child was taking the water using the crock to water the plants,nenek kebayan arrived home. Thus, in her hurriedness, the crock that she was carrying crashed and she tried to hide it by digging a burrow in that area. Seeing the incident, nenek kebayan felt strange but her child told her she had found a spring. One strange incident was that the spring was spurting out water from the area which she dug. Until now, the well kept spurting out water and was never dry. This well is located across the tomb of Nenek Kebayan at the end of a golf course.


This one is interesting. Remember the tall tree in the middle of a golf course that cannot be taken down? It was believe that this busut (home of termite) that resembles an image of a little girl holding something is the guardian of this tree. That's why even a crane can't take this tree down. Niceeee.

So, that's all for now. Will update if anything interesting come across. Ciao.