Born in 1923, Lim Tze Peng is largely a self-taught artist. In his oeuvre, ink paintings and calligraphic works feature prominently, although there is a small number of oils, watercolours and drawings. He created a unique style of ink painting using rich brush and tonal details, and this approach is often regarded as a manifestation of the Nanyang Style in the ink medium. Lim, a school principal until his retirement in the early 1980s, was awarded the Cultural Medallion by the Singapore government in 2003. Boats and the Singapore River are favourite subjects with Lim and he has painted them repeatedly throughout his long artistic career. ‘Singapore River’, one of his early oil paintings, shows his experimentation with abstraction: the bumboats and shophouses are formed by blocks of colour.
