Singaporean artist Tan Khim Ser is a Chinese ink painter, calligrapher and teacher, who spends much of his career teaching Chinese calligraphy, Chinese ink painting and promoting Chinese culture through Life Art Society, a non-profit art organisation Tan founded in 1972. Tan graduated from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 1966 and is trained in both Western and Chinese painting traditions. Birds and flowers in Chinese painting have metaphoric and allegorical elements that symbolise virtue, luck, beauty, political authority, and omens.
With Tan’s passion and knowledge in the Chinese culture, he has painted numerous prevalent Chinese subjects of the traditional bird-and-flower painting, fish-and-flower painting, landscape, and Chinese calligraphy. Evergreen Pastures, sees Tan fusing the traditional form of Chinese calligraphy executed in cursive script, demonstrating his painterly skills and forte in Chinese literary.
青山不老 (qing shan bu lao), which translates to evergreen pastures is rendered in one single stroke, conveying a free-spirited expression by Tan. This results in an abstract and energetic quality of Chinese calligraphic work.
