Born in 1943 in Singapore, Ang Ah Tee graduated from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 1962, specializing in Western painting. A versatile artist, Ang is proficient in watercolour, oil and acrylic. Since 1980, he has had more than 10 solo exhibitions, and participated in numerous group exhibitions in Singapore and internationally. He was the recipient of the National Day Art Exhibition Award (1978) and the Cultural Medallion (2009), awarded by the government of Singapore. Singapore’s cityscape which has provided Ang with inexhaustible subject matter, inspires him to produce yet another lyrical interpretation – the Singapore River in ‘Riverside’. Working in his preferred medium as acrylic has the delicacy of watercolour and the richness of oil, Ang uses a warm yellow palette, and smears the paint with a palette knife to create a hazy nostalgic glow. Interestingly the waterway had already been transformed when ‘Riverside’ was painted; the warehouses and cargo boats had been replaced by trendy eateries and tourist ferries at least a decade earlier.
