He painted sitting on the concrete floor with barefeet. That made me intensely uncomfortable. I can feel the dust and bacteria on my feet and I’m wearing sandals with socks. The concrete floor might have urine from cats or dogs. I know this from life. My husband had to deal with cats or dogs urine outside his office all the time. The owners, at best, brought some water to dilute the pee. It eventually stopped. I think the vet told the owners to not let the creatures urinate.

I can’t even recall how the conversation started. I was looking at his drawing. It was different from a typical watercolour look yet it look intriguing. I said I was having a hard time and I was bad at it. He talked to me as if I was his student. He said that if something is not working, you need to self reflect on your technique and process. Throw away what doesn’t work. Keep asking yourself why and find that answer. Most of all learn from reading a lot and not only on art. He also explained that as a pupil who had 20 marks out of a 100, someone with 30 and 50 marks just looks amazing. But if he is a consistently 80 mark scorer, he would think that 20, 30 or 50 is not great. Some one might be further along, some one might be behind.

His name is Ler Hock Chuan. It was as if I met an ancient sage, the kind who floats down on a cloud delivers wisdom and goes away. It would not be an exaggeration to say I wanted to bow and prostrate in gratitude to a sage.

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I have been thinking about why I paint since the conversation. Art is incredibly stressful for me. There are too many things happening at the same time when the paint, paper and water meet clashing with my skills. I find painting incredibly difficult. I cannot understate this. Nobody can talk to me. I’m either grumpy or I talk absolute nonsense. It’s intense for the absolute merde that I produce.

People who do art say they enjoy it. It allows for self expression. I cannot compute. It’s not a happy experience – neither the doing nor the completion. It’s nasty. As if I broke both my arms and I’m eating lunch, face into the bowl like a dog and having the food going all over the table in the process. Intense and pathetic.

My friend V. said that we should do art together. She does ceramic on Monday afternoons in aircon. I don’t really want to be outside on an afternoon being intense, pathetic and sweating. I rather be pathetic at home.

I was listening to Eric Lin interviewing Chien Chung Wei and Jasmin Huang, two Taiwan watercolourists. It surprised me that even professional artists had to work at it. That they had to put in hard work. It was comforting hearing that even Master artists have to put in a lot of effort to achieve a good painting. The series of conversations is linked here (in Mandarin).

My son says to me, well, you like the hating it or you like that it’s hard. I don’t feel understood hearing that. However, I feel comforted that it’s normal, even beneficial to have to work hard at painting with no real end to it.

The funny thing is, if someone asks me about my philosophy of portfolio allocation and advice, I can perfectly articulate the need for self reflection, the discipline of breaking off things that don’t work anymore and learning and understanding what is available and how it works for me in the same way as how the sage explained art to me. Maybe his advice isn’t art advice – it is life advice.

The back alley and other output from classes I attended with Koay Shao Peng and Ong Kim Seng :