Born in 1941 in Malaysia, Tay Chee Toh studied at Singapore’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and has a postgraduate degree (Oil Painting) from China. He is the recipient of numerous painting and sculpture awards, and in 1985 Tay was conferred the Government of Singapore’s Cultural Medallion Award.In his drawings from the 1950s, Tay displays his sense of design and composition. The horizontal band that appears in the ‘Kusu Island’ sketches and ‘Kelong’ prefigure Tay's work in the 1980s when he located his cloud-like forms amidst a sparse, yet animated abstract field. With ‘Orchids’, ‘Figure Composition’ and ‘Still Life’, ink and pastel reveal his excellent grasp of form and arrangement. There is evidence also of cubist tendencies, which Tay's paintings in later years display. ‘Stormy Landscape’ shows us Tay's feeling for the visually rich and ever changing washes of colour inside activated forms.
