“Because blue contracts, retreats, it is the color of transcendence, leading us away in pursuit of the infinite.” William Gass, On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry (1976). Wassily Kandinsky concurs: “Blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality.” The eyes are gravitated towards the deep blue, an ultramarine-dominant patch with white chromatic dilution, at the centre bounded by a brace of coalescing forms of torsos and limbs, with peripheral space at the edges dipped in the self-same ultramarines with the luxurious hues of lapis lazuli. While the blues are calming and soothing to mind and body, the ambiguous bracelet of entangled forms exude a rhythm and sense of movement with a flailing limb or two tracing odd shapes, suggesting a certain purity of relationships. “I am always driven by movement. Every living thing moves, moving in space and in time. Human movements come in various forms, on the football playing field they move with great determination to overcome their opponents, in a conflict they move with hatred with the intention to kill, in love the lovers move with love to show zuriat,” Datuk Ibrahim Hussein was quoted as saying in 1969. One can feel the graceful, elegant movements of the water dancers. Datuk Ibrahim Hussein is an extraordinarily gifted artist impacting the world with prestigious awards such as the Crystal Award (presented by the World Economic Forum, 1997), the Order of Andres Bello of Venezuela (1993), the Order of Bernardo Higgins of Chile (1996), the Japan Foundation Cultural Award (1988) and Malaysia’s Anugerah Tokoh Terbilang (2007) and is the only artist conferred the Datuk title thrice. Datuk Ibrahim’s tripartite exhibition that also featured Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, in Kuwait in 1977 was a game-changer for him. He was the first Malaysian in the Venice Biennale (1970), through the aegis of the American Smithsonian Institute workshop. Datuk Ibrahim was accorded a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery in 1986. He set up the Ibrahim Hussein Museum and celebrated it by organising the Langkawi International Festival of Arts in 2000. He also organised the Club Mediterranee Asian Arts Festival in Bali (Indonesia, 1987) and Cherating (Pahang, 1988). His art tutelage was in the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting (1959-1963) and the Royal Academy in London (1963-1966). A double scholarship of Fulbright and John D. Rockefeller II Fund in the 1960s saw him in the United States, with two solos in New York to boot.