Dato' Chuah Thean Teng’s batiks brimmed with the simple life and suffused with the agrarian economy of the time. Winnowing padi, tapping rubber, tending to cattle and chicken, rearing birds, eating durians and mangosteens… Here, a farmer is seen threshing padi stalks under the hot blazing sun, with a vertiginous scale to exaggerate the tough work. The whole padi-planting process right up to harvesting was laborious with buffaloes being used to plough the fields. The kampung (village) hutments were the heart of rural Malaya with the people contented with simple pleasures. Women as is typical in Asian societies were shown helping out in back-breaking tasks in the open. Dato' Chuah Thean Teng, the world acknowledged founder of Batik Painting, was accorded a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery in 1965 and a larger Tribute Memorial in 2008. He was conferred the Dato' title in 1998 and given Penang’s ‘Live Heritage Award’ in 2005. The Penang State Art Gallery awarded him a Retrospective in 1994. Teng, as he is popularly called, was the only Malaysian artist invited to take part in the prestigious Commonwealth Artists of Fame exhibition in London, to mark the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1977. He was commissioned batik murals at the Malayan Embassy in Canberra, Australia (1959), Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur (1960), Malayan Tobacco Company, Kuala Lumpur (1960), and the largest at Bank Negara’s branch in Penang (1974).