The Painting

I took a walk at the beach today and captured the beauty of nature.

I was back at my parents’ house in Sarikei recently that I begin to appreciate my dad’s passion for painting. Although I know he’s been painting ever since I was a child. Whenever I walk into the house, I can still see the painting of me when I was at age two wearing brown jade pendants (given by my aunt) was still perfectly kept hang on the wall in the living room.

Ever since retired from his government office, my dad's been spending more time on oil and Chinese brush paintings mainly capturing the essence of nature. I haven’t been seeing most of his works but understand that he’s given most of them away as gift to uncles in Kuching and some close friends of his in Sarikei.

I saw one of his recent paintings on the wall at the house patio. By looking at it for the first time, it gave me a picture that dad is trying to paint a scene of the waterfront in Kuching during the olden days where he can still remember very well. Clearly the building with a cross on it was the St. Thomas School/Church at Jalan Macdougall, Kuching where late grandpa Wang was a teacher and dad’s siblings (six out of seven of them) went schooling there. The roll of the wooden shophouse built by the earliest Chinese migrants locate the Kuching's early business center. I took a look for the second time on my way out before leaving Sarikei, somehow I can feel that my dad is actually missing Kuching and capturing back those days of Kuching in his painting.