Winning ways with watercolour

WHILE the usual practice for an artist is to exhibit and sell works at private galleries, one artist has chosen to submit works to international competitions and win a clutch of awards and affirmations rather than ring up sales.

This was one way he could build up his portfolio, reckons Johor-born Lok Kerk Hwang, who isn't totally unrecognised in the local art market - as his work was once shortlisted in the UOB Painting of the Year competition, even though that was back in 1995.

He's finally holding his first solo show now, about 10 years after he first approached Utterly Art's managing partner Pwee Keng Hock about an exhibition.

The 41-year-old has a graphic design business in Singapore and is a graduate of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art (Nafa). In this show, entitled the Magic of Light, viewers can appreciate his carefully controlled watercolour paintings featuring the texture of surfaces and light on objects such as locks, gates, and rusted metal machines.

The paintings draw your gaze into close up views, styled like photographs, of metal and wood objects, and everyday snapshots of street scenes.

There's that sense of contemporary photography that Lok evokes with his watercolour works. The tight angles pose quite a different approach from the usual expansive and wide-angled views of the streets awash in a mottled patches of colour.

The realistic approach is what he intended right from the start, he says, as he personally doesn't like the "smudge" effect of watercolour paintings. "It's just a style thing. For my works, I use thick Arches paper - 300 gms or 640 gms - so they can absorb the layers of wet, before I paint," he explains.

But he still manages to retain the transparent quality of watercolour, even if he strives for realism - most evident in his portrayal of rust and other temperamental effects of nature on man-made material.

Lok's formal art training was only in high school, as he studied graphic design and not fine arts at Nafa, he explains. While his works were noted as early as in the 1990s, he only painted in his spare time while he worked as a graphic designer.

The highest-priced painting in this exhibition - Symphony of Rust No 2, at $8,000 is a well-regarded one which he has submitted to competitions in 1995, 2000 and 2003. "I take part in competitions worldwide to see how my works are viewed by judges," he explains.

Lok's latest achievement includes being juried into The American Watercolour Society's 2014 exhibition - one of the most prestigious watercolour competitions in the world. He's only the third artist from Singapore to enter this competition after Ong Kim Seng and Ng Woon Lam. He was also one of the five winners in Singapore for the international Winsor & Newton Worldwide Millennium Painting Competition in 2000.

The Magic of Light is on at Utterly Art Exhibition Space, 20B Mosque Street (Level 3) today until Mar 16. View by appointment from Mon-Sat, 2pm - 8pm, and on Sunday from 12pm-5.30pm. Call Pwee Keng Hock at 94872006 for appointments