This must have been one of the most panoramic of Jolly Koh's exuberant flourishes of wild flowers, not in thick bulbous efflorescence, but in solitary skirmish spaced out over 300cm of expansive space, the voids a soothing backdrop as well as breather as the marauding eye jaunts merrily from one wild flower to another. Every little station is like an outburst celebrating life, vivacity and the alchemy of drip and guided paints with spores of coloured dots. A frolic of summer after a winter of discontent and brooding. Like the spirit of the Skylark, as in Percy Shelley's To The Skylark:
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
Thou from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of
Unpremeditated art.
Dr Jolly Koh, the quintessential colourist, pontificates on art, specifically the alchemy of colours, in print and in paint. An 8th generation Baba, he was born in Singapore, grew up in Malacca, educated in Britain and the United States up to his Doctor of Education and Master of Science at the Indiana University in the United States, under a Fulbright scholarship. He had taught in Shah Alam, Sabah, Australia (Melbourne and Adelaide) and back in Malaysia, before devoting fulltime to painting. A high point of his then 60-year art career was celebrated in 2017 in a major survey exhibition (organised by Henry Butcher Art Auctioneers), with a presentable 350-page book to boot.