Coping in the face of adversity: Tan Swie Hian

By Lee Wei Ling, Published The Sunday Times, 20 Jan 2013

The photograph in The Straits Times showed a man standing in a room with a wet floor, and two other men with their backs to the camera mopping up the mess. The headline read: "Top artist's works damaged in blaze."

I scrutinised the man in the centre. He seemed to be grinning but his eyes showed no signs of mirth. Indeed, his eyes had a sad expression.

Mr Tan Swie Hian is one of Singapore's most successful painters. There was a fire in a unit neighbouring his at Telok Kurau Studios. He did what he could. He grabbed six works from his collection - including a painting of my parents, Mr and Mrs Lee Kuan Yew - and fled.

When the firemen came, they doused the fire with water. In the process, several other works in his studio were ruined. The artist couple in whose unit the fire had begun - Mr Anthony Chua Say Hua and his wife Hong Sek Chern - fared even worse. They lost more than 1,000 of their works, the product of over 30 years of faithful creation.

I was intrigued by Mr Tan's facial expression in the photograph and wondered what he was thinking about. "Mr Tan had called his friends to help him clear up the mess and said that he did not have the heart to check the damage to his works," The Straits Times reported. I guessed his smile was a stoic attempt to hide the pain he felt over the destruction of his works.

Through contacts I managed to get his telephone number and called him. We spoke for 30 minutes.

It was not a smile of happiness, he confirmed. Rather, it was ku xiao, a "bitter grin". He had posed for the photographers with that grin to hide his sadness.

Just last month, one of his paintings sold for $3.7 million. But what was destroyed by fire and water did not represent just a financial loss to Mr Tan. What upset him was the destruction of his artistic creations.

He had put his body and soul into creating them. Even if he were to try to replicate them in the future, they would not bear the freshness of spontaneous creation.

He told me that he had been painting a scene of my parents together when they were students at Cambridge University. Although he had grabbed that painting as he ran out of the studio, it had already been partially damaged. He later told The Straits Times wryly: "The painting has gone through the baptism of fire."

I quoted to him two lines from one of my favourite poems, Rudyard Kipling's If: "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/ And treat those two impostors just the same…"

He agreed that he had no alternative but to just carry on. Crying over spilt milk was a waste of time and effort.

All of us have experienced the equivalents of "triumphs" and "disasters", though not perhaps on as dramatic a scale as Mr Tan, Mr Chua and his wife have. As difficult as it is, each of us must learn to cope with "those two impostors just the same".

When I failed a postgraduate examination in 1982, it seemed to me my world had collapsed. In 1995, when I developed peripheral neuropathy, I read extensively about it and imagined the worst-case scenario. More recently, I have had new health problems.

There are moments when I feel enormously frustrated with my ill health. But at other times I try to stay positive with the following thought: None of us knows our tomorrow. Indeed, the very next moment may bring either triumph or disaster.

My next moment may be less certain than the next moments of most other people. But I can choose to either wallow in despair, paralysed by uncertainty, or live each moment as fully as I can, never putting off till the next what I can do now.

Perhaps because I have been facing my present ailment since 2006, I have come to terms with it. Perhaps with time I can learn that true detachment that scripture tells us is the mark of wisdom.

After all, what are these losses that we suffer in life - creations destroyed, health lost - but advance lessons that we can't take any of this with us when we die.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

* Damaged portrait of Mr and Mrs Lee completed
Local artist Tan Swie Hian has finished the artwork that was soaked by water and smudged when a fire broke out last year
By Benson Ang, The Straits Times, 25 Oct 2014

More than a year after a fire left an unfinished painting of Mr and Mrs Lee Kuan Yew partially damaged, the artwork is finally complete.

Fire broke out in January last year, at the Telok Kurau Studios, two doors away from the studio of local multidisciplinary artist Tan Swie Hian.

Then unfinished, the rolled-up painting was soaked by water used by the firefighters.

In June this year, Tan finished the 2.13m by 3.39m painting, created from oils, acrylics and ink.

It is hanging in a house belonging to Mr Wu Hsioh Kwang, a prominent local businessman and art collector, who is also Tan's friend. Mr Wu's home in Bukit Timah consists of three levels of artworks created by Tan.

Says Mr Wu, 63: "I feel this is a very important artwork because Mr and Mrs Lee's love story is part of our nation's history. Their love story is something all Singaporeans can learn from."

Recalling the fire, Tan, 71, says in Mandarin: "Back then, the water and soot resulted in some of the painting's colours smudging. This artwork has gone through a baptism of fire and water. I'm glad it's finally complete."

Titled A Couple, the painting shows former prime minister Mr Lee and his late wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo, in their youth. It was inspired by a black-and-white photograph of the young couple on the campus of Cambridge University in 1946.

Tan had started work on the painting in 2009 on Valentine's Day.

He says: "I chose to paint them because everyone can learn from their love, especially in this day and age where life expectancy is rising and divorce rates are high. Here is a couple who entered into marriage and lived together happily."

He adds: "Mrs Lee once said she was a traditional Asian wife who always walked two steps behind her husband. Those words left a strong impression on me."

Mrs Lee died in October 2010 at the age of 89. After her death, Tan, who is also known for his poetry and calligraphy, wrote a poem - in English and Chinese - in her memory. He incorporated the poem into the painting's background to give it an "added dimension".

He says: "I've always felt she was a great woman who, despite her intelligence and capability, was also a humble and dedicated wife."

To further show his admiration for the couple, Tan added two Vanda Miss Joaquim orchids, connected by a twinned stem, next to Mrs Lee.

His biggest challenge was making out the expression on her face as a shadow is cast on it in the photograph. Another challenge was imagining the colours from the black-and-white shot. Tan adds: "The photo's background is also filled with buildings and very complicated. I veiled the background with clouds to bring the figures into full focus."

Tan was recognised as Singapore's most expensive living artist after one of his oil and acrylic paintings, When The Moon Is Orbed, was sold for $3.7 million at an auction in Beijing in 2012.

Last year's blaze had left several of his pieces irreparably damaged.

He says: "I had to cut up 14 of my oil paintings from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s because they were damaged beyond repair. It was very, very painful.

"Thankfully, this painting of Mr and Mrs Lee was not one of them."