“It’s easy to say I want to be an artist because I love art. But this love alone is not enough. There are three things you must do to be an artist: You must have a dream — dream every day and night that you want to be an artist and of why you want to be an artist; you must have passion — all the time wherever you go, you are constantly thinking “I must draw this. I must create that”; and you must suppress your other interests and have discipline. The priority is always art and nothing else.” – Thomas Yeo A prolific painter, Yeo works with a variety of media namely gouache, oil and acrylic. His early works show quiet surrealist natural environments — “mindscapes” as they were sometimes called — with wispy images of trees, in which occasionally nestle slight hints of rural houses. Later he developed bolder abstractions of colour and textures. Described as “first and foremost a colourist” by fellow artist and critic Chia Wai Hon, Yeo’s paintings place colour as their topmost priority, with their subjects being of secondary importance. Yeo’s work in the Eighties prompted Chia to describe his output as “highly imaginative landscapes of the subconscious mind”. Thomas Yeo was enrolled in Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts from 1958 to 1960 and studied under pioneer painters such as Georgette Chen and Cheong Soo Pieng. From 1960 to 1964, he trained at the Chelsea School of Art and the Hammersmith College of Art & Architecture in London where he held his first overseas solo show at the Cathay Gallery in 1963. He returned to Singapore in 1967 hoping to find greater support for his work. From 1973 to 1977, he held solo exhibitions in Singapore and Australia. In 1983, he won second prize in the UOB Painting Of The Year competition in Singapore which recognises top talent in the region. In 1984, he received the Cultural Medallion from the National Arts Council, Singapore, an honour recognising individual artistic contributions to the country’s arts and cultural landscape.