Teh’s art is traditional, yet also trailblazing
The artworks of Hock Aun Teh have always blazed a trail. Not solely in terms of the swathes of riotous colour which sweep across his canvases or sculpture, but by remaining true to his Chinese roots.
As a student at the Glasgow School of Art, Teh, born in Malaysia to Chinese parents, was told not to be distracted by passing fashions in art.
David Donaldson, then head of the art school’s drawing and painting department and a famous artist himself, told him: “Keep your tradition. But keep on expanding it.”
In 1974, Teh was the first Asian student to graduate in drawing and painting from the school. Today, the 72-year-old lives and works in Glasgow, making regular trips to south-east Asia. One of his sculptures was commissioned for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Chinese government named an arts centre after him in Fujian Provence.
Last weekend, Teh’s solo exhibition, Expanding Traditions, opened at the School of Art’s Reid Gallery.
Teh was taught as a boy in Malaysia to approach painting as a spiritual commitment. Before coming to Scotland, he learned about English watercolours and traditional Chinese ink painting of birds, bamboo, flowers, and landscapes.
He still creates from imagination, invoking Chinese calligraphy and gestural mark-making, coupled with a riot of energetic colour.
Teh describes his childhood playground, which was surrounded by paddy fields and rubber plantations, as being “in a state of perfect harmony and unity between man and nature”.
Today, Teh’s art is featured in major public and private collections the world over.
The artist says that his hope for this exhibition in the art school, which nurtured him as a young artist, is that it inspires a new generation of students.