From his Singapore sketches to European paintings, Becoming Lim Tze Peng reveals a man with myriad lives.
SINGAPORE – At 103, Singaporean artist Lim Tze Peng has distilled his daily life to three essentials. He eats, he sleeps and, without fail, he picks up his brush to paint.
Throughout the 40-minute interview with The Straits Times, he is excitable and ebullient about the fact that his first major institutional show locally since 2003 opens on Oct 25. Lim recounts in Mandarin: “After class, I would run to the Singapore River to paint the boats. My teachers would close their doors when they were painting, but I would still try to peek in from the outside and watch.”A 1946 ink painting, titled Coolness In The Depths Of The Mountains, is Lim’s earliest-known ink work and shows a skilled if typical mountain scene.
“During founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s time, when he ordered the clean-up of the Singapore River, and when old buildings were demolished, I felt a real surge of anxiety,” Lim recalls. “Every morning, I would drive into the city before 8am – to avoid the congestion surcharge – and draw at least two paintings a day, until the afternoon.”
As a core founding member of Ten Men Art Group, Lim had made five art expeditions across South-east Asia and painted scenes from Bali to Brunei to Sumatra. Ms Lam, who has been visiting Lim’s family weekly since more than a year ago, has also curated a display of never-before-seen materials from his home. These include reference books, scrapbooks and sketchbooks – objects that lend insight and credence to his oral history, which art historians primarily rely on today.
These notes are best considered in the light of the exhibition’s third and final section, On My Own Grounds, which engages with Lim’s more experimental and abstract works. Lim estimates he has made more than 20,000 works of art over his lifetime. They are highly sought after by private collectors and can go for upwards of $200,000 at auction, but Lim – who says he is not in it for the money – is indifferent.
Asked what his greatest life accomplishment has been, the centenarian says: “When I look at my work and compare it with that of international artists, I think I’m as up to the mark as them. I’m not boasting, but my works have reached an international standard. I’m very happy and satisfied with my output.”
The elder Lim lives with his wife, Madam Soh Siew Lay, 98, and told ST in 2010: “She always said, ‘Art is your first wife, I’m just your second wife.’” “He slowly tries to inject certain non-oil-painting techniques into his oil work,” says Ms Lam, who points out the slender and sharp brush work on some of the trees that are not typical of oil painting.
Lim, who paints en plein air, said in an interview cited in the exhibition catalogue that he had “almost covered the entire France” during his residency in Paris. Dotted across this second room are some of the most intriguing output of his European flanerie.Measuring almost 5m wide, this ink and colour painting is the largest work of Lim’s on display. Resembling calligraphic script, the abstract work sees him harnessing the energy of the line to create a force of nature.
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