An abstract in batik - from the hands of, you'll never guess, Dato' Chuah Thean Teng, the legendary Father of Batik-Painting. Kandinsky would have been very proud. It's an an abstract of concealment and fudging or camouflage, densed, crowded and busy, shapes over shapes over shapes, mostly fish-like forms and cacing (worms) in a vertical phalanx. The odd shapes look like they can be independent though enmeshed with one another. On a horizontal format, the shapes loll vertically or recline in insouciant abandon. Wassily Kandinsky had said: "Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul." A rare abstract batik by the Real True McCoy himself. Dato' Chuah Thean Teng is a rare founder of a world art genre, Batik Painting (Chinese Art In The 20th Century (1959), Professor Michael Sullivan). He was accorded a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery (NAG) (1965), being the first Malaysian so honoured, and by the Penang State Art Gallery in 1994. The NAG again gave him a Tribute Memorial exhibition in 2008. Teng, as the artist is better known, was conferred the Dato' award in 1998, and given Penang's 'Live Heritage Award' in 2005. He was the only Malaysian invited among stellar artists in the Commonwealth Artists of Fame exhibition in London, to mark the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1977. His batik art was shown in a solo in London in 1959.