Today, you are fair and your skin is smooth
You play the proud and laugh at me
But when you will be very old and wrinkled, in the evening,
By the candlelight, you will tell with pride
To your grandchildren gathered around the fire,
Ronsard celebrate me in those days when I was beautiful.
— Pierre de Ronsard (1524 – 1585)
Early success can fossilize an artist or slow his growth, but that would not happen with Chang Fee Ming. His “watercolour world”changes as the waves of the South China Sea and as the chameleon that runs on the jambu trees. First hailed as an artist who painted Malay kampong scenes, he excelled in batik cloth, then was famous for people without heads, then for Burmese monks in monochrome robes. Balinese women with their legs in the water, Laotian rivers, Cambodian ponds of lotus… How can Fee Ming renew himself so much? How can he tackle subjects so various, and still be equally successful – each of his different approaches acclaimed by a following of collectors?
First Guru
One secret lies in the beauty of Fee Ming’s first “guru” – the Terengganu of his childhood. That beauty is both rich and romantic. It is made of memories of ancient kingdoms nestled by rivers that ran through forests of gigantic trees, of stories of seafaring people migrating to sundrenched shores. The state itself is a long stretch of land tucked between the mountains of the Banjaran Titiwangsa (the Main Range of Peninsular Malaysia) on the west and the South China Sea on the east. To the north lies the border state of Kelantan and on the south the vast plantations of Pahang. The Kemaman, the Dungun and the Terengganu rivers flow from hills covered with jungles inhabited by tigers and elephants down to estuaries where small towns-actually gatherings of villages-where born from fishing and maritime activities. |
