Suzlee Ibrahim has done several memorable series but his Sakura Series seems to capture the imagination most. It was done in his studio on his return from Japan, where he watched the Sakura Festival at Ueno Park in Tokyo where there are often more than 1,000 cherry trees. There were many people with great expectations, some even picnicking. It was a mesmerizing spring, the sakura blooms, but Suzlee interprets it as a great beauty of Nature – a hanami (viewing and smelling flowers) ritual, and a sign of life and vivacity. And the impermanence, how everything will evanesce, until next spring. The cherry blossoms spectacle are different all over Japan – January in Okinawa and peaking in late March or April in Honshu. Suzlee goes for a platter of blobs and splatters with dominant red against white and black streaks and stains, like a Pollockian drip. Suzlee Ibrahim has taught for 26 years, first at his alma mater Universiti ITM (graduated 1987) and then Aswara, and was awarded the Tokoh Seni Citra Kencana UKM in 2011 and the Anugerah Perkhidmatan Cemerlang Aswara in 2010. He had also won the Japan-Malaysia Art Friendship Ambassador Award (2007) and the Emaar Art Symposium Outstanding Creative Excellence Award, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2005). He had solos in Denmark (Remise Academy, Brande) and Macedonia (Kicevo art colony), and in 2010, took part in the Tunisia Art Festival Workshop in Monastir. He had a glimpse survey exhibition at The Art People Gallery in Klang in 2016. He presented a body of works alongside Rafiee Ghani at Nou Gallery, Taipei’s leading gallery, from Nov 16 to Dec 16, 2018.