Remembering a Journeyman

Encounters with Mr Teh

My encounters with Mr Teh have left an indelible impression in my mind. I remember him, coming up the hill to Lost Generation Space where I was then living, bringing along with him various papers, furniture and paints to arrange his work space and mull about while I would stand and observe curiously.

Our conversations would begin and they were steady and slow, and he was a man filled with stories, dreams and an infectiously adventurous spirit. He spoke of his leaving Malaysia in his youth, taking the hippy trial and hitching to Europe, landing in Switzerland where he then entered art school. The horizons then were clear, and the spirit was one where every and anything was possible, and he made it happen.

Nepal was one land he crossed on the way to Europe. So peaceful and tranquil he said and I feel immensely lucky, to report that I have experienced that same calm in the land. Well, I harboured these dreams, those days living in the quietude and creativity that was everyday life in lost gen. Mr Teh encouraged my dreams, do it, burn, burn, burn and keep that flame alive.

As of now, writing this, I am studying art at the Academie Minerva at Groningen, the Netherlands and I am immensely grateful for the push and inspiration of an elder like Mr Teh for blazing the trial and for passionately believing in the journey and the path.

I like the man’s work as much as I admired his wisdom and his spirit. Another memory that is lucid in my mind is that of his work New Skin for an Old Ceremony. Rahmat Haron, poet and artist asked him if he was a fan of Leonard Cohen, and that was something esle we had in common, a love for music, and L.C.

One other work of his that I love is his Chinese snake painting, the ourobos or snake devouring it’s own tail. It is a symbol found in ancient Egypt, China, in Alchemy and Hinduism among other cultures. Though it has several meaning, the symbolism I most love about the serpent devouring it’s own tail is that it symbolizes the beginning and the end as an infinite never ending cycle. ‘My end is my beginning’ and here life feeds off itself.

With this blog and the coming exhibition of his works perhaps we can see, and draw the circle, beginning and end fused into one, for this cycle may be complete, to bring forth the new.

Mel

Sunday 9 January 2011

Groningen, the Netherlands