This must have been an earlier batik by Chuah Seow Keng, one of the scions of batik pioneer Dato Chuah Thean Teng, with the liberal use of cracking lines. The composition is framed by the woman walking away from viewer in the centre with contrasting hues of cool and warm. The pictorial centre is also framed by a sparse-looking tree and the blazing sun, flanked by strong darkened coconut tree-trunks. As befitting his German training of method and complexity (like the Germanic ‘Protestant/Puritan Work Ethic’), Seow Keng excels in more eye-twisting geometric and mathematical permutations, though not evident in this work. Despite his father’s batik credentials, it was in plastic technology (fiberglass sculpture) that Seow Keng was studying, at the Suddeutschekunstoff-zentrum in Wurzburg, northern Bavaria, under a scholarship in 1968. But in 1974, he was invited to demonstrate batik-art in a documentary by the TV channel, l Zweites-Deutsches-Fernsehen Trans-Tel. Trained by his father from very young, Seow Keng held his first solo of batik painting in Fuchu, Tachikawa and Tokyo in Japan in 1973, followed in 1975 by Tokyo (Kanda Gallery), Osaka and Okinawa. In 1989, he received a Certificate of Excellence (mixed media) for Outstanding Achievements at the Artitudes 7th International Art Competition in New York. Two of his works, Fish (1981) and Rural Life (1986) were selected for the United Nations International Children’s Education Fund’s (Unicef) greeting cards for 1988. In 1992, two more of his works, Fish (watercolour) and Sunrise (batik) got the Unicef honours again. He had also done several sculpture commissions, especially in fibreglass.