Born in 1942 in Singapore, New York/Singapore-based artist Wong Keen’s art training began under Liu Kang and advanced under Chen Wen Hsi’s mentoring. In 1961 Wong left to study at The Art Students League, New York, and in 1963 received the League’s prestigious Edward G. McDowell Travelling Scholarship to travel and study in Europe. During his formative years as an artist in New York during the 1960s, Wong was influenced and surrounded by significant artists of the Abstract Expressionism movement in American art such as Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollack, as well as by renowned artist-teachers at the League under whom Wong studied such as Morris Kantor, Sidney Gross, and Vaclav Vytlacil. Key elements from the movement continue here in Wong’s painting that are derived from these various sources of inspiration: The gestural and dripping strokes emerging from/into the geometric blocks or ‘fields’ of emotive colour.
