Tan Wei Kheng is a true modern-day Penan warrior. It is through his portfolio of portraits that one gets to know about the itinerant Penan tribes living in the jungle interiors of Sarawak. Wei Kheng makes regular visits not only to paint individual portraits – whether they be ordinary members or chiefs, men or women, adult or children – but also to take clothes, medicine, food provisions, reading and writing materials for them. Sometimes, they also help out with small infrastructural jobs. The portraits are realistic, compassion and even affectionate. The Penans are nomadic hunters who live off the natural resources of the rainforests and mountainous areas. Wei Kheng brings up the nobility of character and dignity in his detailed renditions with dramatic poses. Here, a hunter by the name of Berok Limun from Long Balau in Ulu Limbang, is caught in pensive mood as he rests in his spartan home. He first met this Penan in 2009 but painted him only in 2011. Wei Kheng, 47, a self-taught artist from Marudi in Sarawak, originally worked as a ceramist for a commercial enterprise. When he took up painting, he found he had an aptitude for portrait-painting, and the Orang Ulu like the Kayan, Kenyah, Penan, Kelabit and Iban have been immortalised on canvas. In 2009, Wei Kheng had a sold-out exhibition called Nostalgia of Tribal Borneo in his first international solo foray at the Gallery Avanthay Contemporary in Zurich, Switzerland. His first solo was at the Miri Boat Club (1991), followed by Hilton Hotel Kuching (1992), Holiday Inn Miri (1993), Rihga Royal Hotel Miri (1994), Hornbill House Miri (2001), Art House Gallery Kuala Lumpur (2003), Penanga Club, Brunei (2009), Metro Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur (‘Tong Tana,’ 2012). In 2014, he was given a solo by Richard Koh Fine Arts in Kuala Lumpur in an exhibition called, Art Language of the Jungle.