World Inspired Landscapes: Malaysia

The country of Malaysia is located a the southern most tip of Asia, with about half located on the large island with Brunei and Indonesia. It is adjacent to a major shipping lane in the sea, hence the ship off on the horizon in the painting. The area was subject to a series of competing kingdoms until the British established colonial rule with the presence of the East India Trading company. Among other things, the British introduced their parliamentary system which mostly remains to this day, and palm oil trees which were initially meant to be decorative. In the painting, the short palm trees represent palm oil trees, which are now an enormous industry in Malaysia. Unfortunately these trees take up a lot of land, and have to displace the natural jungles that existed before. When planning out this painting, it was important to avoid a cliched beach painting, that is, sand and palm trees and the sea. So I took inspiration from the Batik fabric tradition of Malaysia, which is a process whereby craftspeople hand paint fabrics with elaborate floral designs, a kind of colourful blinged-out wallpaper. Batik has a lot of gold outlines and be-jeweled shapes contrasted against bright colours and black/white highlights. My landscape has elements of repeating design in the palm trees, and follows colour cues from examples of batik fabric I saw on the internet.

World Inspired Landscapes: Malaysia, watercolour 6 x 9" watercolour paper, February 2024