One glance, and you would have thrown up your arms and with disdain declared, no, that is not by Puah Kok Yew, or as he has become to be better known Kok Yew Puah, with the Western penchant for shuffling a Chinese surname to the back. What’s so unusual? The figure is rendered in silhouette, not in his usual Pop Realism. There’s half a picture taken up by wildlife, humping pachyderms at that, and what must have looked like Puah’s early Neo-Geo works on his return from art-studies in Australia, has been reduced on the canvas-within-a-canvas to one of fluid mercury. Then there’s the non-copybook  art-historical referencing, to Picasso’s Guernica no less. Is that a self-deprecating work, if not, one suspects he was not chuckling, but there was a modicum of rheum, in Puah trying to be a Picasso. He must have felt that the tragic characters in Guernica were having a good laugh, at him. Mischief was afoot. What was he drinking, or smoking, or thinking?” But really, it is such “distractions” that Puah found succour and even some sort of validation, in his pursuit of being an artist instead of a reluctant businessman. Incidentally, a comprehensive exhibition of Puah Kok Yew is on show at the Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, from October 12, 2021 until April 3, 2022. Coming from a business family, Puah Kok Yew chose to pursue Fine Art, while his brothers took up Engineering. So, at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, he got his diploma for Painting and another for Printmaking. On his return, he held a solo at the Samat Art Gallery (1973), taught Printmaking part-time at the Mara Institute of Technology and created a series of Neo-Geo silkscreens until the lack of proper printmaking facilities made him concentrate on the family chilli-sauce business until he sold it off in 1994. In the Second Coming of Puah, he was greatly inspired by David Hockney, and became known for strong figurative works on the youth of the MacDonald’s generation, industrialisation and urban decay, and neglect of cultural heritage. It was productive: Two solos – Kok Yew Puah: 1985-1993; Klang and Beyond (1997); and there was the 2nd Prize in the Malaysian level Philip Morris Asean Art Awards in 1994, and he was again among the winning circle of five in the next year.