Lee Cheng Yong was adept at portraits, still-life, Realism and abstracts including a sustained series on Cubism. Here, he portrays his subjects through selected colours and lines. A sense of movement and vibration is achieved through dynamic shapes and forms. He explored the relationship of forms and colour against a dark background, allowing the audience to delve into his surrounding world. He was also an activist, as founding president of the Penang Chinese Art Club (1935), founding member of the Society of Chinese Artists Singapore (1935), Ying Ying Art Society (1936) and the Penang Art Society (1953). He was arguably the second artist to have a proper solo exhibition, at the Philomatic Union in Acheen Street in 1932. In 1996, the Penang State Art Gallery accorded him a Retrospective, and in the same year, he was given a Memorial exhibition at The Art Gallery, Penang.