S. Mohdir worked as a school teacher since 1960 for more than 36 years. He served as the President of Association of Artists of Various Resources (APAD) from 1984 to 1996. He was one of the founding members of APAD and an active artist in the Singapore art world with 3 solo exhibitions, and as a teacher mentoring younger artists in art classes.He received his art education from the Famous Artists School based in Westport, Connecticut, U.S.A from 1953-56. It offered correspondence courses in art on painting, illustration and cartooning. Stylistically, he was adapt at abstract, surrealistic and later realistic paintings. His batik paintings were also well regarded.S. Mohdir was honoured with a solo exhibition organised by APAD in 2001 and recognised as a pioneer artist in the APAD Pioneer Artist Exhibition in 2010.In this picture, fossilised fish bones and fishes slip between the natural world that we inhabit and the ancient world. The layering of translucent colours and shapes build up into a three dimensional space on a flat surface. Contrasting warm colours like red and orange with cold colours such as blue create an illusion of depth and space. The amorphous and organic shapes construct images of an aquatic world that these fishes inhabit. The title, Dalam means ‘deep’ suggests the deep sea as a world that offers infinite possibilities, a world that humans have yet to explore and understand fully, and hence, a space that provokes imagination for an artist.Dalam adopts the surrealistic pictorial idiom to create an imaginary mindscape of fishes that forms part of his larger oeuvre exploring the natural world. This is one of the earliest experimentations in surrealism that was also explored by artists like Cheong Soo Pieng in the 1970s. In this art historical context, Dalam is significant as an example of early experimentations in surrealism by Singapore artists. This work was shown in APAD’s 2010 exhibition.
