Victor Chin

Tan Hon Yin in his studio/house in Penang

Tang Hon Yin, 67, was a geography teacher and later a State Education Director, in Penang for more the 30 years.  After school hours, his artistic passion was painting but now he does it whenever he likes. He is currently the chairman of the Penang Art Gallery.

For many years he has been producing paintings with Nature as the main subject. His first solo exhibition “Water Margin” was in 1983 in Penang. The collection was later shown in Kuala Lumpur in 1986. His latest series “Silk Road” was shown in 2008 in Melbourne, Australia.

Though he didn’t go to art school but through his many trips abroad, on his own initiative, he adopted two artistic parents, the American artists Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkom. They were his main inspirations. Tang admired the two artists for their use of colours and shapes and compositions.

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Ahmad A Khairuddin’s ‘ Cityscape’

A group of artists — all autistic — got together and held an exhibition recently to celebrate United Voice’s own building.

A self-advocacy society for people with learning disabilities in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya, United Voice (UV) has been around since 1995.

After successfully raising more than RM1 million through various fund-raising events and donations, UV finally managed to purchase their own space this year.

The ground floor is their showroom and training centre where baking classes and craft making workshops are held while the first floor houses an art gallery.

It was in this gallery that the works of Nurul A. Rahman, Tan Seng Kit, Nadiah A. Jalil, Damiem Wong and Ahmad A. Khairuddin were shown.

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Syed Ahmad Jamal, Between Haven and Earth

Nature has always been an inspiration for artists throughout the ages. Mountains, in particular, have inspired many regional landscape painters.

From China there has been a long history of artists who painted the many outstanding geological features of their physical geography. Some of these artworks besides depicting the shapes and designs of mountain formations in great detail also conveyed clear information of the various geological compositions of their landscapes.

One of the most well-known Japanese artists, Hokusai, from the Edo period, made colour wood block prints of a series of 36 views of Mount Fuji. The Great Wave of Kenagawa done in 1831 is one of Hukusai’s signature compositions of this collection of early postcards of Japan.

Cezanne paid homage to his boyhood home in Provence by painting the Mont Sainte-Victoire in Aix at least 60 times from 1885 to 1906. His devotion to a single hillock slightly over 1,000m in his backyard set the modern standard of painting and looking at European landscapes since the Renaissance.

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For those of you who missed the event in Kuala Kubu Baru, this is my video take of the Sat. 17 April nomination day for the Ulu Selangor parliamentary by-election.

All these years, I had not taken an interest in getting to know a bit more about the Malaysian Constitution. It’s all my own mistake and ignorance.

I had always thought that being a Chinese, I am automatically a second-class citizen compared to the Malays who have been given preferential treatment in our country all these years.

As the Malays are the majority and are Muslims, I had also assumed  we had become an Islamic country and not a secular one, because of the  prominent mosques everywhere.

I have been mistaken and ignorant all along. In our Constitution, every Malaysian of any race has equal  rights and also, this is a secular country.

My new awareness of the Constitution and other civic liberty issues stems from what I had learnt at the Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia (SABM) roadshows and forums that I had attended. Here is the latest video of some of the highlights from  the SABM event in Melaka.

Hope this video (which I had put together) will throw some light on important issues affecting you.