An artistic pursuit
Chasing his lifelong passion led renowned artist Peter Liew on a long difficult road, writes
THERE’S something oddly satisfying about Peter Liew’s nature paintings. The forested landscape, the bubbling brook, the low lights that glint off the riverbed bathed in deep browns and greens bring me back to my days of trekking deep in the forest. They have an irresistible pull in their beauty and wildness. There’s so much to take in. A particular corner may become the whole scene — a tangle of foliage, a leafy clearing, a dense growth of trees, perhaps even a tree root.
One of the most affective works is his rendition of a scene in a pristine rainforest setting. A tree stump, dead but still here, the relic of some tall proud tree now lying forlornly by a stream. This is the atmosphere of Liew’s paintings, where anything can take place, right up to the crack of a twig that tells you that even in solitude, you’re not really alone.
“I painted this on the spot,” he tells me conversationally. A passing piece of information as he shares that this particular piece of art that I’m staring at, transfixed, was painted in Hulu Langat. “On the spot?” I ask incredulously, stopping him in the middle of his explanation. It’s a huge painting — 5 feet by 12 feet.
On the spot? I ask again. He nods, shrugging his shoulders. “I hired a lorry, together with five burly men to help me lug my canvas and my art paraphernalia. During rainy days, we had to carry the painting back to the lorry and wait for the rain to stop!” he explains, chuckling. Why the hurry? He pauses and for a moment, we simply look at his painting together in companionable silence.
“Emotions can change,” he answers slowly. “What appears one thing now may slowly shift to look like something else. I paint fast because I want to capture that fleeting moment where the sunlight is at a particular spot, and when I’m feeling a particular way.”
Among collectors, curators and other art world people, Liew is known both for his politeness and retiring, if not modest, personality. When you meet him, his gentleness and grace strike you immediately. He’s loathe to refer to himself as “famous” — he prefers the word “exposed” — and thanks to this, you wonder about his ego, which seems somehow to have gone missing. But then, as he talks about his art and painting “his feelings”, you suddenly catch a glimpse of his eyes behind his glasses. Beyond the discretion lies an intensity that he cannot entirely disguise.
A fast painter he may be, but Liew is quick to point out that it took him “years” to get to this point. “People don’t realise
... my art is all about my character, my identity. I paint my feelings, my emotions on canvas. I have my own language — art.
Peter Liew
the long road it took to get to where I am today. The techniques, the learning curve and the difficult paths most artists have to traverse before they get to this point.” he says, waving his hands at the paintings hung on the wall.
I meet him about a week before his “Retrospective” opens at the Soka Gakkai Cultural Centre located along the bustling Bukit Bintang road. The gallery, as he walks me through, is full of two decades’ worth of breathtaking, uplifting art. Unsurprisingly, I’m especially intrigued by his natural heritage pieces hung on the plain walls of the exhibition hall.
Yet the show isn’t really ready; the atmosphere is of playful disarray. There are paintings artlessly leaning against the wall yet to be hung. There’s yet another that’s inadvertently hung wrongly. “This is upside down,” he unperturbedly points out to an apologetic staff. He laughs the mistake off before moving on to show me his other artwork that showcases a dazzling array of techniques and styles ranging from the traditional Nanyang Art Academy influences to expressionism and abstract coupled with his signature fusion of both Eastern and Western influences.
The exhibition, he shares, is a culmination of his long journey as an artist. “It has been a difficult road,” he admits candidly, before adding with a smile: “But one that was worth the disappointments, sacrifices and hardwork. That’s how you get inspiration anyway!”
The artist was born in 1955 in a remote village “tucked somewhere between Tapah Road and Tapah!”
The rustic village life in Pekan Getah, surrounded by the ubiquitous tracts of rubber trees, was where his love of art and nature was first birthed.
Recalling fondly, he confides: “It was an idyllic life. We weren’t well off but back then Pekan Getah was the quintessential representation of Malaysia at her best — multiracial and all living in perfect harmony with nature and each other.”
It was a resident artist at his village that stirred Liew, already keen on drawing, into creativity. “He was a graduate from the famed Nanyang Academy of Art in Singapore. Every time he painted, we’d peek
into his window to catch him at work. He didn’t like people watching him paint, but at one point he caught us peeking through the window and threw open his door. He beckoned us in and said that he’d show us how to paint!” he recounts.
Liew was 7 at that time. Seeing the artist transformed a blank canvas into a beautiful piece of artwork with his brush and paint stirred a passion within the little boy. “From then on, I simply loved painting,” he says simply, adding: “Of course my parents were aghast. They said: ‘You want to become an artist? You’ll die of hunger!’”
But Liew was determined to pursue his love for art. “We were poor. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to art school. So when I decided to enrol at the Malaysian Institute of Art in Kuala Lumpur, I saved up my ang pow money, which was just enough to pay for school fees for the first semester!” he says blithely.
He rented a room along with three other students, each paying a then-princely sum of RM30 rental.
“I had to be frugal with everything else. I ate one meal a day and when I ran out of money by the 15th, I lived on instant noodles!” recalls Liew, before adding with a hearty chuckle: “Still can survive!”
Eventually, his savings did run out and he went to his elder siblings for help. “They pitched in to give me around RM100 per month. My eldest sister who was a rubber tapper also contributed,” says Liew, his eyes glistening.
Art supplies were expensive, he shares, so he’d source for alternatives and recycled former graduates’ art supplies that were about to be thrown out.
“I’d paint over used canvasses with varnish so I could reuse them. Old dried-up tubes of paints were not thrown out either. I’d hammer out the remnants of paint and use them.”
It was tough, he acknowledges, but the fact that he was pursuing something he loved helped gloss over the challenging moments.
Says Liew: “Painting brought me such joy. It may have been difficult trying to make ends meet but the hard times provided me with lots of inspiration!”
Things didn’t become any easier after he graduated with a diploma in fine arts. “It was my dream to pursue my art education in Paris,” he reveals. But it wasn’t to be. His art teachers advised him to give up that dream and teach instead. “It was practical advice. After all, Paris seemed like a distant dream. I took their advice and taught instead,” says the pragmatic artist.
After all, there’s the innate financial instability of most artistic careers (low earnings and sometimes, none at all), little job security, no pension and other benefits.
For artists without a lucky early break, rich parents or benefactors, says Liew, a day job is often the only way to survive. So he taught for more than a decade, burying his dream deep within him.
A DREAM FULFILLED
Teaching art, he insists, wasn’t a consolation prize. “I loved art so much that even my teaching years taught me a lot about my techniques. Art is an ever-evolving subject. You keep honing your skills and learning from other fellow teachers or Masters — so that’s what I did,” says Liew.
For a long time, he was content. He had a career, he was earning a salary and he had a family of his own. Liew met his wife at the Academy while he was teaching, and she, a student.
Seeing my raised eyebrows, he reassures me with a hearty laugh: “I was a young teacher and she wasn’t much younger than I was at that time!”
He was determined to make a good life for his family. “I looked at my daughter and said to myself: ‘I must give her a good life.’ Being an artist isn’t easy. I didn’t want my wife and daughter to suffer,” confides Liew wistfully.
But his wife had different ideas. She knew of his dream and his love of painting. “She asked me: ‘Do you really want to spend your whole life just teaching? Is it your ambition to be just an art teacher?’” he recounts. Liew couldn’t say anything. His wife had known that he didn’t have that chance to pursue his art. It was time, she argued, that he pursued his dream. Go to Paris, she told him.
And so he did. “I had savings by then and sold off some of my properties so I could pursue a full-time artist vocation for the very first time,” says Liew, adding: “Paris was wonderful!” He visited galleries, museums and participated in small art events. “Paris changed me,” he says simply. It was the beginning of a new journey for Liew and one he’s continuing to this day. He still travels all over the world, he shares, for inspiration.
Liew’s current exhibition covers three overarching themes — nature, cultural heritage and faces representing his influences over the years. His style is varied but the familiar bold strokes resonate throughout the exhibition, be it breathtaking natural landscapes, quaint architecture or Warhollike faces of popular personalities. They still have his unmistakeable stamp. He’s happy with that summation.
“I’m happier when people recognise my art. Peter Liew isn’t important. Peter Liew’s art is,” he says, smiling.
So what is really Peter Liew’s style? “Style? It’s nothing to do with style,” he counters with a shake of his head. “To me, my art is all about my character, my identity. I paint my feelings, my emotions on canvas. I have my own language — art.”