Chua Ek Kay: Comparison between Chua Mia Tee and My Works

Chua Ek Kay
Old Street Scene - Chinatown
Chinese Ink on Paper, 69 x 78 cm

Chua Mia Tee
History of Human Spirit (1983)
Oil on Canvas

Both Chua Mia Tee and I painted the Chinatown scenes. There are some similarities as well as differences between both artworks.

The both of us have similar thematic concern. For Chua Mia Tee, the Chinatown scenes are vivid memories from his childhood and he wanted to document these scenes before they get forgotten and vanish from the urban landscape. Similarly, "The streets and lanes hold fond memories of my childhood as well as dreams of my present and future". So, i wanted to paint the "old Singapore streets, with their varied architecture and suggestion of a way of life gradually fading into the past, into tropical decay, or encroached upon by modern high-rises". Therefore, both of our works are inspired by our childhood memories and hold similar intentions.

We used different mediums to paint our artworks. In "Old Street Scene", I painted the Chinatown scene using Chinese ink while in "History of Human Spirit", Chua Mia Tee used oil paint to paint his work. The use of ink, a Chinese traditional medium, creates a black and white effect, to portray a scene back in the olden days. Moreover, Chinese paintings often make use of positive and negative spaces and this effect produced is similar to that of the black and white photographs in the past. On the other hand, Chua Mia Tee used oil paint to paint his work but he managed to create a sepia effect through the warm hues. So the painting looks vintage too. Therefore, although the mediums both artists used are different, both artworks are able to create a vintage effect.

Also, both of our paintings depict subject matters differently. For example, in my painting, the painting is devoid of human presence. However, in "History of Human Spirit", human figures are depicted engaging in their daily routines or activities. Even though i did not paint any human figures, I painted dark doorways in the foreground which implies activity beyond the doorways. So these black patches serve as an abstraction of the human activities or engagements. On the contrary Chua Mia Tee painted people in the midst of their activities. The people seem oblivious of being painted as Chua wanted to capture the moment of a typical Chinatown scene. Therefore, the subject matters in our paintings are depicted differently since the subject matters in my painting are abstracted while the subject matters in Chua's painting are painted realistically.

Lastly, the perspective of our works are similar. Both of our works depict an atmospheric perspective, where the subject matters are not painted clearly at the background to show a vanishing point. This creates depth in our work. In addition, subject matters diminish in size in the background.

In conclusion, there are similarities -- the perspective, thematic concern and choice of subject matters-- but these are painted differently. I have adopted the Chinese traditional ink painting while Chua is influenced by the western art and he chose to use oil paint. Therefore, the visual impacts differ.