GEORGE TOWN, Dec 21 — Retired art teacher Koh Shim Luen only started painting full time two years ago and the result is a portfolio of about 130 pieces of mixed media paintings of heritage shophouses in George Town and Malacca.

The veteran artist has been painting all her life but started working as a teacher in the 1970s before she took a special teachers’ training course to teach art and became an art teacher.

After teaching for many decades while dabbling in her hobby as an artist, Koh decided it was time to turn to her art full time when she retired.

She studied fine arts in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and has participated in various art exhibitions here and internationally.

The soft-spoken artist, who was born in Ipoh, Perak, is also a freelance Chinese-language writer for art, literature and social subjects.

Koh currently has a solo exhibition — Straits Shophouses — that features her mixed media work on paper of heritage shophouses in George Town and Malacca at The Star Exhibition centre in Penang.

Here, in her own words, she shares her love for the unique architecture of George Town and Malacca pre-war shophouses:

• From young, I already liked to paint. Even in school, I took art in exams and painted a lot. Then I went to teacher’s training in the 1970s to teach primary school. So I wasn’t teaching art then. It was when I went on to teach secondary school that I started to teach art. I went for a special teachers’ training course for a year, learning how to teach art. Then, I went to USM to take a fine arts course. That is also when I started painting.
• I like to paint different subjects so I also paint flowers, Malay villages, scenery, people. This Straits Shophouses exhibition is more on architecture. For architectural paintings, this is my third exhibition. I’ve also done one in black and white before. I’ve done more than 10 solo exhibitions of different themes in recent years.
• I was born in Ipoh but I grew up in a village area, Manjung. I had plenty of inspiration from my surroundings in the village; the scenery, the wooden village houses, the coconut trees and the people. I like to paint that kind of scenery too.
• For 30 years, I travelled to Malacca and Penang where I took pictures of places and buildings that I kept as my own personal record. Two years back I turned full time artist. I stopped teaching, so I finally got more time to become a full time artist. Before that I was a teacher, I didn’t have much time.
• When I took pictures last time, I didn’t have any intention to paint it yet. I just wanted to keep it for my own record. Two years back I realised we have to present this to our youngsters. This is our art, our tradition. In Malacca, the houses are the Baba Nyonya style. In Penang, it’s the Straits Chinese style. These are very beautiful houses. If you look at the Malacca houses, they are more elaborate, we can see the workmanship, made by China craftsmen on the houses. We will usually see a lot of floral designs on the Malacca houses, unlike the Penang houses.
• I like old buildings because they are very decorative. Whenever I look at these buildings, I see each one as an art piece. I studied fine arts in USM for four years in 1983. At that time, when I was free, I walked around George Town, took pictures of the buildings, made sketches to keep for myself. That is why some of the paintings are based on pictures back in the 1980s and 1990s. Penang has so many beautiful houses. My favourite is a grey building in Malay Street. It’s so nice. Like a piece of art. The artwork is already sold.
• If you look at my work, there is a continuity there. It is a continuous project as I took one year to do each piece one after another. These buildings are like artefacts. It’s my main aim to record them for the future. Even now, some of these buildings are different. The nicely carved wooden doors are all gone. Some were sold off and replaced with cheap imitations. Some are just neglected and destroyed. Some were so tarted up, it is different. This is why I do this. I like history and I want to preserve it for the future generation. i taught art in school. I also write Chinese articles about historical subjects.
• This is very tedious work because of all the details, the decorations on the walls, it needs a lot of work. It takes me about a week to paint one piece of work. In this project, I do not use any creative licence to change any detail of each building. Everything is as it is, in the year I took a picture or made a sketch of it.
• It took me one year to complete 130 pieces. I closed my door and started painting. I didn’t go anywhere. No tours, no visiting, no travelling. I do these based on my own pictures, sketches and memory. I painted every detail, every tile and every carving. Some buildings I painted two pieces.. because if you look at the second floor, even the upper floor is an art piece by itself.
• Times have changed and I can’t recognise many of these buildings I recorded 30, 20 years ago. One particularly pretty house in Malay Street was totally defaced, its nice wooden doors are gone, replaced by metal shutters and the windows are also gone. It used to be a house, now it is some sort of warehouse. Then, there are some which were given very nice facelifts. I only wish to show people what these places were like 30 years ago through this exhibition and my paintings.