In 1966, the year Cheong Laitong painted this work, he was at his primest in art being the wunderkind of the Wednesday Art Group started by Peter Harris. He had stints as USIS Exchange scholar at the Skowhegan School of Art in the United States (1960), followed by a stint at the LCC Central Art School in London (1961). His stints abroad which included short studies in London (Central Art School) and visits to Japan and Egypt, was to shape a new abstract phase for Laitong, from 1968, playing with bold calligraphic strokes and tropical colour splatters. In 1966, he was already accorded his first solo and famously had a solo, his third, opening on May 13, 1969 at Chen Voon Fee’s Gallery 11. He had already developed his swift calligraphic strokes of genuflections and movements that had become his trademark style, what Redza Piyadasa dubbed the “transference of calligraphic techniques into the medium of oil painting” in Modern Artists of Malaysia (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1983). Whether Chinese script or alluding to some nebulous anthromorphic forms or sheer line burst, the result is an eye-stacy. Cheong Laitong won the 1st Prize in oil and acrylic in the Salon Malaysia in 1969 and 1979. He won a major award in the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank mural competition in 1962. The 1960s proved his high points with involvement in major exhibitions like the Commonwealth Art Today in London (1962-1963); Malaysian Art touring Europe (1965-1966); 1st Triennial of Contemporary World Art, New Delhi (1968); the Sao Paulo Biennale (1969); and Man And His World in Montreal, Canada (1970). But his work as regional creative director for a cigarette company took him away from the canvas for long spells.