Such luminescent scene on a nocturnal evening. Romance is in the air, what with the sound of the waves lapping the shore and the palms swaying gently in the wind. Prone more to abstractions, Dr. Jolly Koh, the supreme colourist, has let the beautiful scene congealed by itself, retaining the main forms but swathed in his inimitable palette. A sumptuous feast. As he had intoned with unabashed candour: “My aim is to produce achingly beautiful and moving pictures.” It was at the time he was painting similar oeuvre of Titiwangsa, but it could well be any place, no doubt magically transformed by his brush and vivid imagination. Times like this, one would just love to lean against the trunk, thinking nothing thoughts, and savouring Nature’s play. Artist-academician-scholar Jolly Koh was a wunderkind in art and got to study first at Hornsey in London followed by a teaching course in London University. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study for his MFA at the Indiana University, where he was also a teaching associate. He helped set up the Fine Art programme at the Mara Institute of Technology (now a university), and taught at Gaya College in Sabah before spending many years teaching in Australia ending up as senior lecturer at TAFE College in Adelaide. On his return to Malaysia, he taught at the MSC College (now SeGi, 2000-2004). But painting is his greatest passion, since his first solo at the British Council Kuala Lumpur in 1958 at the age of 16. A comprehensive book on his 60 years of painting journey titled Jolly Koh @ 76 was published and launched in the 2017 exhibition at White Box, MAP Publika, Kuala Lumpur, organised by Henry Butcher Art Auctioneers.