Naïve it may be, but to Cheong Lai-tong, his impetus is to “paint a painting not seen before.” One that’s beautiful, of course. “Whatever I paint, I mainly want to show that I am different. I have no formula.” Simple as that. Lai-tong painted mainly during the stillness of the night, with some soothing classical music for mood, and straight to the canvas. No sketches, no drawings. His inspiration was often the natural landscape, real or imagined, but with colour permutations, often primary, for the essence, and self- therapy too, after a hard day’s at work. His abstract model was at its infancy: this work with a solid homogenous blob is more contained, form-wise, though the sides lapses into a panoply of ‘radio-wave’ graph – not his usual splintered and fragmented cut- out forms, swift calligraphic strokes or the patterning in-filling. Done in 1964, when he had his first solo – at Balai Ampang, Kuala Lumpur, Lai-tong was at his prime in art, as a wunderkind of Peter Harris’s Wednesday Art Group – before what he described as his “lost years” – of working in a senior position for Rothmans of Pall Mall, and then its regional director. Cheong Lai-tong will always be remembered for his outstanding stint at the Wednesday Art Group, together with Dzulkifli Buyong. Self-taught, he got a USIS Exchange scholarship at the Skowhegan School of Art in the United States in 1960, followed by a course at the LCC Central Art School in London (1961). His works were included in major Malaysian exhibitions abroad including the Commonwealth Art Today in London (1962-1963); Malaysian Art touring Europe (1965-1966); 1st Triennial of Contemporary World Art, New Delhi (1968); the Sao Paulo Biennale (1969); and Man And His World in Montreal, Canada (1970). His major triumph was the 1st Prize for Painting in the 1st Salon Malaysia (1969), and 2nd Prize in the 2nd Salon Malaysia (1979). He also won mural competitions like the Istana Alam Shah in Klang (1958) and Muzium Negara (1962). One notable group exhibition was the 1967 GRUP exhibition, which was reprised 30 years later, in 1997.