작품 상세

Time was when raising children was a full-time job for stay-at-home women apart from doing household chores and tending to the spice and fruit garden for more self- sufficiency. The interior was spartan, no electrical modern conveniences like fans with the kampung-house veranda affording steady infusion of the breeze. Here, the toddler in the buff is clinging on to the mother, back turned to him, for attention, as she combs her hair looking into a mirror. The woman on the right clad in a loose sarong needs to keep up the allure with the hope of finding a jodoh (suitor) soon. A screwpine tudung saji (food cover) is hung on the wall: it is not mealtime yet. According to Seow Keng, son of Dato' Chuah Thean Teng, the world progenitor of batik-painting, his work had been turned into postcards during the time when their Yahong Art Gallery premises was at Leith Street in the Penang city centre. Chuah Thean Teng, later a Dato', was dubbed the 'Father of Batik Painting' by Professor Michael Sullivan (in the book, Chinese Art in the 20 th Century, 1959), but he still kept innovating over the years to expand the parameters of batik painting which he developed in 1953, harnessing a 2,000-year-old tradition into a modern art form. He held his first solo exhibition of batik painting (Penang Library) in 1955. Teng, as he is better known, was the only Malaysian among great world artists featured in the Commonwealth Artists of Fame exhibition in London, to mark the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1977. He was arguably the first Malaysian to have an exhibition abroad, at the Commonwealth Institute, London, in 1959, The National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur honoured him with a Retrospective in 1965 and a Tribute exhibition in 2008, while Penang accorded him a Retrospective in 1994 and the Dato'ship title in 1998. He was a recipient of the Penang's 'Live Heritage Award' in 2005.