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.Trees have a special place in Lim’s art and he has produced numerous paintings of them in his long career. Around the turn of the century, the trees grew increasingly massive and the wildly entangled branches, trunks and roots began to dominate the compositions, often overwhelming all other elements.
