Choy Weng Yang is articulate with words as well as with paint. He is an art critic, curator and artist. He was doing a fair bit of critical writing when he was a curator with the Singapore National Museum from 1978-1985, when he decided to concentrate on painting full time. He was influenced by Monet, Cezanne and Mondrian, and in the 1990s, by the Chinese ink painters. His abstracts in post-Independence Singapore are actualisations of colour relationships and experimentations. Short, staccato strokes in mesmerizing mix of colours. He said: “The whole context of the painting changes drastically when certain colours or tones are replaced or rearranged. Then colours will take on a new vitality or a new meaning when composition is altered.” Constance Sheares wrote about him in 1995: “He has always been fascinated by colours and what they do to one another, not only when mixed but also when juxtaposed one against the other.” Choy Weng Yang is a brilliant colourist, just like Malaysia’s Singapore-born Dr Jolly Koh. Both of them studied together at the Hornsey College of Art in London in 1959-1962, and even have a memorable duet exhibition in Singapore in July 2010. In 1963, Weng Yang followed up with an Art Teacher’s Certificate from the University of London’s Institute of Education. He was awarded a cultural tour of India in 1979 and of France in 1985. Under the Unesco Creative Arts Fellowship, he got to meet Josef Albers (1888-1976) and Jules Oliksi (1922-2007) in their studios. Strangely, the only recorded solo he had, Ambience, was at the DP Space in Singapore in 2000.