Embracing a peripatetic life of art

CHATTING with artist Chen Cheng Mei makes one think of that American Western slogan, have gun will travel. In her case, it was "have paintbrush will travel" right from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Back in the days when most Singaporeans only knew of far-flung places like the Amazon, Tahiti and Samoa through National Geographic magazines and TV documentaries, she had travelled to those places and done what artists do best: commit the scenery to canvas.

"It started as early as when we were art students," she recalls. "Cheong Soo Pieng would take us to the Johor coast, to paint outdoors," she says. Chen studied western painting at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art from 1949 to 1954, and her teachers included the academy's founding principal Lim Hak Tai and pioneer artist Cheong Soo Pieng.