Painted in 1983, the work “Flamboyance” was selected for the 1983 National Day Art Exhibition and won the Excellence Award of the Exhibition. The painting marks the early break-through in Lee Hock Moh’s artistic career. By adopting the subject matter of the tropical orchid plant, he succeeded in injecting local sentiment and vitality into the classical birds-and-flower painting in the gongbi style. Encouraged by his mentor See Hiang To, the artist began to paint orchids during his school time at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Over the decades, he has always enjoyed planting orchids in his home garden where he would observe and admire them daily as they developed from seedlings to full bloom. This painting, along with a large body of sketches and drawings, resulted from his intensive observations of his subject. He gave great attention to detailing the intricate anatomy of the orchids using fine and precise lines. Moreover, his skillful application of heavy-coloring and green-and-blue coloring methods enriches the painting, creating a sense of exuberance and liveliness in the pictorial subject.
