Hijau represents a departure from Yusof Ghani’s early figure-centric works but though celebrating the country’s rich endowment of Nature, he is not bent on painting a scenery, picturesque or otherwise. His is about a state of awareness, and as the scholar Abu Talib Putih wrote in the catalogue (Yusof Ghani Hijau 1998-2002) in an exhibition at Galeri Petronas, his works are “… sympathetic enmeshment of the artist with the vitality of the natural world around him so that his own spirit is infused with it and absorbed into it.” The location is identified as Ulu Yam in Selangor, and the waterfall invariably the three-tiered Sungai Sendat waterfall, and not the Sungai Tua waterfall. Ulu Yam is also blessed with hotsprings although it has an unsavoury past during the communist insurgency. The rhythm and flow of the waters are a celebration of life, and of the divine. An established artist hitting 70 next year, Yusof Ghani is also an academician (Universiti ITM), gallerist (Tapak Gallery) and collector. Through Tapak, he organised the Shah Alam Bienniale starting in 2016. He was doing illustrations and graphic designs for 10 years before a scholarship changed his life. He studied for his BFA at the George Mason University (1981), and then MFA at the Catholic University in Washington, USA (1983). His notable series were Tari, Topeng, Wayang, Hijau, Segerak, Biring, Wajah and Ombak. In 2017, he had a solo, Segerak VI – Transcendent Figures, in London. Segerak VIII, the final episode of Segerak Series, was organised by Curate Henry Butcher, Galeri Prima, and Pinkguy Gallery in August 2019, and received well response.