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.

Tan is fond of painting birds, flowers, fish and animals in xieyi, or freehand style, as it offers an expressive quality of spiritedness in his subjects through spontaneous brushstrokes and ink application. In this pictorial series, Tan depicts the lotus, which symbolises spiritual enlightenment and purity of the mind, body and spirit and conveys a sense of peace. With the exuberant colours of roses, Tan employs colour to render the emotive colours of spring. Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal; where leaves, flowers, birds seem to burst into life after a long winter rest. Blooming tulips convey a message of new beginnings; lining the pathway to wish one a flourishing year ahead.