This watercolour of fishermen is noted for the lighter, softer tones used and an almost spartan whitish beach backdrop. Six figures, two partly hidden, clad only in shorts and with the heads wrapped in cloth to shield from the hot sun, doing the shore chores as when the fishermen set out to sea or return from it. Note the leg stances to help leverage of the hands. These are the small-time fishermen eking a tough and dangerous living, not the trawler-boat taikoh (bosses) raking in a tidy sum from the economies of scale. For these fishermen and shore workers, the tough life is not known to the customers blithely picking up the fishes from the market, wet or dry. They are all Khalil Ibrahim’s unsung heroes, their faces anonymous and generations after generations, harvesting the bounty of the seas. One of the best southpaws in Malaysian art, Khalil Ibrahim was sent on a Pahang government scholarship to study art at the St Martin’s School of Art and Design in London in 1959-64, for his National Diploma in Design. He was already 30 when he graduated. He spent another year for his post-graduate in 1965. After a very brief teaching stint on his return, he was released from his bond, and he decided to turn full time, and he has been painting fulltime since 1966. But a stroke in 2012 had put a brake to his career. In 1970, he was given his first solo at the Samat Art Gallery, of his batiks and watercolours, and he also had a solo exhibition in Indonesia that year. Khalil was a co-founder of the Malaysian Watercolour Society and rose to vice-president once. His two main exhibitions so far were ‘Khalil Ibrahim: The Art Journey’ at the KL Art Space, Petaling Jaya (2015), and ‘Khalil Ibrahim: A Continued Dialogue,’ at Galeri Petronas in 2004.