Tew Nai Tong pays tribute to the halcyon days of a newly independent and emerging Malaya of the simple unhurried life and innocence, of people with greater affinity to land and their livestock, of closer relationships among family, friends and the community. Having grown up in the rubber estate, he shows empathy with the rubber tappers he re-created onto his canvas. The rubber tappers would start their day in the wee hours and return with buckets filled with the latex strung on poles carried over their shoulders or balanced on the head. Tew Nai Tong reached the pinnacle of his career in the Odyssey survey exhibition at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, in 2007, celebrating 50 years of painting. He held his first solo at the British Council, Kuala Lumpur, in 1964. Trained in the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts (1967-1968) after a stint at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore, he won 2nd Prize in the Chartered Bank Mural Design Competition (1964), Shell Award (watercolours, 1981), Esso Award (1982), Dunlop Award (watercolours, 1983), and the Asia Art Award (Malaysian level) in Seoul, South Korea in 2009. He decided to become a full time artist in 1992, after teaching in three art institutions for a total 23 years. He co-founded the now defunct Le Beaux Art Gallery and jointly established the Malaysian Watercolour Society and the Contemporary Malaysian Watercolour Association.