작품 상세

Fancy a Terang Bulan motif, popular in Jolly Koh's oeuvre in the mid-1990s, in 2007. What more the 'shooting star' motif with a bulbous head got wider play around 2009 albeit mostly on a horizontal veneer. Here, the meteor-like object shoots straight up with a little debris in the trajectory, the line demarcating the bed of wild flowers below. Seen against a pervasive golden sheen, the upward thrust with a bevy of wild flowers in luxuriant bloom, it's a spectacle. For Jolly Koh, these are all elements in prettifying the environs in another paean to Beauty. After all, As Jolly Koh had opined in his book, Artistic Imperatives (1999), that in life, one should take the opportunity to enjoy art for its intrinsic beauty, and its celebration of human values. And as Bridget Riley put it in The Mind's Eye: "I want people to enjoy my paintings, I want to give them that elation and freedom. I want them to feel as I do, or can sometimes, to have this particular joy." Jolly Koh is best remembered for the major survey exhibition, Jolly Koh@76 (White Box, Publika), in 2017, organised by Henry Butcher Art Auctioneers, which was accompanied with an impressive book chronicling 60 years of paintings. Artist, academician, scholar and pontificator. Education: NDD (national diploma in design) at Hornsey, London, and a teacher's certificate at London University; Fulbright scholarship at Indiana University, in the United States, for Doctor of Education and Master of Science (also a teaching associate). Teaching: Mara Institute of Technology; Sabah's Gaya College; Art in Melbourne and Adelaide; MSC College (SeGi College). In the legendary Magnificent 7 GRUP exhibition, Kuala Lumpur, in 1967.