Celebrated Nanyang painter Kuo Juping illustrates a figure of a lady painting outdoors. A polka dot dress and stiletto heels is worn by the lady, making her look charming and confident. Big brush strokes were used to create the background of this piece allowing the lady to stand out and become the main focus of the composition. Warm tones of earth colours were used to suggest a romantic ambiance. Live drawing was one of the artist’s favourite past time activities back in the days. Kuo Juping (the name was taken after a water plant) was in the pioneering batch of students at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art (NAFA) in Singapore but had to return a year before graduating to tend to his father’s import-export business, Sing Guan Thye & Co. He was a founding member of Thursday Art Group and Penang Chinese Art Club in 1936. He was one of the first artists to paint the ordinary people and places such as rubber estates, oil palms / cocoa plantations, padi-fields, kampung and make-shift hawker centres. He was a mentor of Tan Choon Ghee (1930-2010) who became a legendary watercolourist. Kuo died of a stroke in March 1966 at the age of 58.