Lim Kay Hiong is a Chinese ink painter. At the tender age of six, Lim moved to Singapore from Shantou and was later trained locally by pioneer artists Fan Chang Tien and Shi Xiangtuo. In 1966, he graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and was later the co-founder of the Molan Art Association. In 2005, he received a merit award for Beijing’s 1st International Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, Painting & Seal-carving Grand Exhibition. To date, Lim has held over five solo exhibitions and has his works collected by local and foreign institutions, as well as private collectors around the world.
This Chinese ink painting is typical of the studies of vegetation and fauna that Lim produced in his collection. In his rendering of plants, Lim uses an opaque shade of ink in the foreground, and a relatively more translucent colour in the background. By doing so, he adds spatial depth to the piece. In blended colours of grey and red, a red-whiskered bulbul—a bird commonly found in Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia—perches on a branch. Such close attention to native species of animals reflects Lim’s interest in depicting local motifs in his artworks.
