Born in 1942 in Singapore, New York/Singapore-based artist Wong Keen’s art training began under Liu Kang and advanced under Chen Wen Hsi’s mentoring. In 1961 Wong left to study at The Art Students League, New York, and in 1963 received the League’s prestigious Edward G. McDowell Travelling Scholarship to travel and study in Europe. The lotus is an enduring symbol of purity and spirituality in Asian culture, and in Wong’s Chinese aesthetic and Western technical style the flower has a recurring presence. Here, in its latest incarnation of Wong’s stylistic experimentation, the lotus is at its most lyrical and representational as compared with ‘Lotus Metamorphosis’ of 1987 and ‘Dream of a Lotus Pond’ of 1999. Standing nearly three metres tall, this masterpiece depicting life above and below the lotus, a symbolic heaven and earth, recalls the renowned Qian Xuan’s ‘White Lotus’ scroll, uncovered in a Ming dynasty tomb in 1970.
