작품 상세

Two women squatting and huddled in the limited shade of a boat parked on the beachfront, making a transaction over small fishes (in basket). There’s not much to be made by the itinerant vendor from selling small fishes, in the hot sun, and it’s probably a luxury for the other party to be able to afford to buy. Only the rainbow- strip patterns of the boat, though straited, offers a colourful respite to the scene. Such is the industry and enterprise of the Kelantan womenfolk that they can be seen in the padi-fields, in the open wet market and on the sea shore, helping out net-mending, making fish crackers (keropok) and dried anchovies or carrying the haul or fishing gear back. No stereotype gender roles in the kitchen for them, although they would be firing up the stoves, to cook food for the family. Still, with modern marketing, sorting and distribution under the LKIM (Lembaga Kemajuan Ikan Malaysia), these women may be rendered obsolete, but you can’t easily put these matriarchs down or out. Chang Fee Ming has produced some of the most spectacular watercolour tomes tracing the Mekong, on Bali, East Africa and the Malaysian East Coast, among other places. He had twice won the Malaysian Watercolour Society award (1984 and 1985) and the Bakat Muda Sezaman Minor Awards (1986 and 1987) besides 1st Prize in the PNB competition (1985). His biggest prize was the Gold and Overall Asean Prize in the Sime Darby Art Asia Competition in 1985. Other accolades include two Awards of Distinction, Rockport Publishers USA 1997; the Dom Perignon Portrait of A Perfectionist Award, Malaysia 1999; and the Winsor & Newton World Millennium Painting Competition (co-winner, Malaysian category (1999).