A young man gazes downward at an arrangement of bottles and scattered papers on a table. He appears absorbed in thought — perhaps an artist contemplating a still life composition. Anthonie Chong's characters seem to emerge from his imagination, rendered in a restrained colour palette. Dressed in a checked jacket, the figure rests his fingertips lightly on the table, suggesting a moment of quiet deliberation. Through a subtle interplay of form and colour, the artist conveys a nuanced sense of the subject’s inner world. Anthonie Chong graduated in Graphic Design from the Perak Institute of Art in 1991. He won the Philip Morris Asean Art Award, Malaysia in 1998. In 2000, he switched to caricature-like iconography fusing eastern surrealism with digital technology, namely his e-monk creations which morphed into @-monk in 2010, which was represented in three series – Community, Gaia and Mechanism. He had his first solo at the X Pub and Gallery in Penang in 1974. He had worked as an art teacher (Art Design, Kuala Lumpur), graphic designer, illustrator and lecturer at Art Direction (1992-1995), before helping out a relative in his business.