Dragons hover all over Jolly Koh’s painting repertoire of 60 years, numbering easily a dozen. In profiles, standing erect, celestial or as an imperial insignia (the five-clawed dragon of Manchu emperors), they are depicted singly and floating, in the air, on land and underwater. There are dragons in profiles (left and right) as shown in the dual exhibition with Choy Weng Yang at Singapore’s Sunjin Galleries (June-July 2010), and others with telling titles like Urat Naga (Dragon Veins), Dragon Scent, Dragon Landscape, Dancing Dragon, Dragon Country I-III, Dragon Dance I-II, Kangxi’s Dragon, Celestial Sea Dragon, Night Of The Dragon… Some works can stretch up to (66cm x) 244cm. Though not born in the lunar year of the Dragon himself, Jolly Koh finds the dragon invested with supernatural powers, regal and a sign of fame and prosperity, unlike in the West where it is vilified as a monstrous villain spewing missiles of fire. Embellished in gold, it exudes a sense of something precious and auspicious. The Asian dragon has also become a chauvinist symbol of masculinity, though lexiconography lists dragonelles as those of matured female variety. Artist-academician Jolly Koh has a chequered career in art, with tutelage at Hornsey College of Art and London University (England) and Indiana University (Masters, United States). He had taught at the Mara Institute of Technology, Gaya College in Sabah, Melbourne and Adelaide (TAFE College), and MSC College (now SeGi University). In 2017, he was given a major survey exhibition (organised by Henry Butcher Art Auctioneers) at MAP Publika (White Box), Kuala Lumpur, accompanied by a book chronicling 60 years of his life paintings.