In Latiff Mohidin’s trinity of gestural paintings, the Rimba Series ranks as a transition of consolidation and recollection before the dreamy flotsams into his Voyage Series. It’s a spot of respite, in reassessing and reattuning to the natural environs and the outgrowth of foliage, rehashing the cycle of birth, rejuvenation and decay, and the struggles therein. The brushstrokes are more glacial and coarse, with antithetical force, unlike the splotchy skeins of thick yellow ochres in full sound and fury of the preceding Gelombang Series. Staunch phalanxes, some in vertical bulwarks, stem the once vigorous splatters, but if there was sound and fury, it likes in the crackling snaps of twigs, triggered from within the natural elements itself, like the strong winds. Nature is always something inherent and implicit in Latiff’s oeuvre, and in Rimba, there seems to be an attempt to reconnect, to nurture and sustain, for an uncertain balance. Latiff Mohidin is a great Southeast Asian icon in art and literature (poetry). After his major Retrospective, dubbed 60 Years Latiff Mohidin in December 2012-June 2013, his actual second at the Kuala Lumpur National Art Gallery, he hit a new peak when his celebrated Pago-Pago Series was chosen as the first feature showcase from Southeast Asia, at the exalted Pompidou Centre in Paris, in 2018. For his poetry, he clinched the Malaysian Literary Awards consecutively from 1972 to 1976, the SEA Write Award in 1984 and 1986. He was appointed Guest Writer at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in 1988. His fluency in Deutsche when taking his art studies at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in West Berlin saw him translate Goethe’s Faust later. Latiff had also won the John D. Rockefeller III Fellowship (1965) and the French Culture Ministry to study printmaking at the Atelier Lacouriere-Frelaut in Paris (1969). His art repertoire comprises drawings, prints, paintings and sculptures. His first break was when he won 2nd Prize (Graphic) in the 1968 Salon Malaysia.