Karen Landscape I

Credit Line: Gift of Ian Holliday 2023, Collection of SMU

While the ranges of Karen State may have fuelled his creative imagination, Tamalar's (b. 1978, Mon State) painting goes beyond landscape idealisation: the vision before us is of a highly stylised fantasy realm. Karen Landscape continues in the established vein of the artist's Dream Landscape oeuvre of manicured countryside scenes in strikingly vivid hues. Chromatic harmony and symmetric order predicate the artist's aesthetic sensibilities, and in this painting ornamentation is enhanced with the introduction of impasto reliefs that dot the foregrounded trees.

The SMU Art Collection has over 70 paintings from Myanmar donated by Ian Holliday. A specialist in Burmese politics, Holliday assembled the Thukhuma Collection which comprises of Burmese paintings largely dating from the transitional decade of the 2010s, presenting multiple artistic perspectives on a society in reform. On display at School of Social Sciences and Li Ka Shing Library, the gifted paintings depict the people, culture and land, from the streets of Yangon and rural peripheries to political icons and indigenous deities.