Tay Kok Wee was one of the founding members of the Equator Art Society (EAS), which was a leading group of the left-wing art movement in Singapore during the 1950s and 1960s."Picking" is one of the significant works, representing the local social realist art movement. Ideologically influenced by the socialism, the work reflects hardship suffered by the working class under the British colonial power. In terms of stylistics, the work reveals influences from the European realist tradition as well as Russian and Chinese social realist art.
