Foo Chee San apportioned a considerable part of his life nurturing the next generation of artists and is fondly remembered as a teacher to numerous younger artists. Foo was born in Hainan and later trained in Western painting and Chinese ink at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts from 1953 to 1956. Inspired by his teachers, pioneer artists Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi, Georgette Chen and See Hiang To, Foo eventually became an art educator for over 50 years. To fulfil his other passions in life, Foo created a body of work consisting of woodblock prints, Chinese ink paintings and oil on canvas throughout his artistic career.
Inspired by pristine landscapes and the simplicity of everyday life, Foo had a penchant for depicting kampungs of Singapore and Malaysia in his early works. To him, local subjects, such as coconut trees and local villages, have a distinct Asian character that helped to develop an artistic genre unique to Singaporean art, as seen through the work, Tranquil Dusk. Combining Chinese and Western mediums and techniques, Foo outlined the composition with black ink and painted the foreground in vivid colors. In the distance, the background recedes as colors are applied lightly, and details of the scenery subtly blurs into the horizon.