A Good Begining

Yeoh Jin Leng

Born: 1929

Education:  1957 - Chelsea School of Art, London

　　　　　1961 - Hornsey College of Art,University of London

Rice Fields, Trengganu is an earlier work by the artist, produced just after he had returned home from his studies in an English art college in London. Yeoh Jin Leng has always been interested in nature and organic forms and he is possibly one of Malaysia’s finest landscape painters. At the time this work was created, he was teaching in a secondary school in the town of Kuala Trengganu, which is noted for its many fishing villages and the surrounding scenic paddy fields. This particular work is, perhaps, the artist’s most reproduced painting, and is notable for its vast, panoramic view of the rice fields depicted just before the harvesting season begins. The artist has used central perspective to draw the viewer’s eye deep into the distant horizon. The golden yellow of the ripened paddy fields is treated in a manner that is both expressive and filled with radiant tropical light. The eye is led dramatically into the picture, over the golden fields, only to be halted by a distant Malay kampung with its gently swaying coconut trees and a distant hill, set against the sky.

Nature is depicted pregnant with a seasonal ripeness and is truly majestic in its splendour. Powerful, confident brushstrokes suggest a sense of inspired immediacy in the capturing of the moment. The work also evokes a sense of space and atmosphere that is indeed memorable. In hindsight, the celebratory mood of this work, idealising that landscape, may have also reflected an exuberance and an optimism that was typical of the romantic, euphoric visions of our newly-returned artists during those years immediately after the attainment of our independence.