The 1960s was when Cheong Laitong was at his most exuberant, emerging on the coat-tails of the Wednesday Art Group formed by Peter Harris. In the 1960s, the ‘canvas’ was invariably masonite board. Self-taught, he developed an abstract vocabulary that was instantly popular and raw. Most notable were his swift calligraphic strokes in dominant black (with tropical colour splatters) like Motherwell’s that became his trademark, and which critic Redza Piyadasa described as the “transference of calligraphic techniques into the medium of oil painting” (Modern Artists of Malaysia, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1983). Naively, Laitong was driven by the impulse of “painting a painting not seen before”. He was a wunderkind, and in 1966, he was given his first solo, at Balai Ampang in Kuala Lumpur. In the early 1960s, he also made a name for himself in art murals like the one at Muzium Negara stretching 115 feet, and one of the Sultan of Selangor’s palaces.