My 10 minutes of fame!

I'm not sure if anyone caught it, but I was on TV some time in mid-Jan. My wife was probably the only one watching...heheh.

Anyway, the Breakfast Show (the show worth waking up for) on NTV7 interviewed me in their arts and culture segment. Daphne Iking and JP were the jovial hosts on that day and totally made me feel at ease as I talked about my art.

However, they made a mistaken comment about me being the first Malaysian impressionist artist which I corrected on the show. With its long history dating back to the 19th century, Impressionism has had many fans and followers, and I'm sure I'm not the first to have been inspired by it.

I hope that my 10 minutes of "fame" on the show managed to shed some light on Malaysian art and helped people appreciate it more. Of course, there is only so much that a show like that could do to promote art.

I spoke about the issue on the show -- how schools and the media can play a more active role in instilling a love and awareness for art (and culture). I remember in the old days when there was only RTM on the TV channels, there were a few programmes on art. The artist, with his brushes, paints and palette knife, would start with a blank canvas and by the end of the show, it would have been transformed into a beautiful piece of landscape.

In schools, these days, art has been relegated to a subject for the not-too-bright students! Subjects such as science and mathematics are given more importance. No doubt they are important, but we do need to balance our knowledge of such "hard" subjects with art which lends some beauty, culture and sophistication to our personalities.

Well, that's my two cents' worth, anyway.

I had planned to thank a few significant people but there was no time to do it on the show. So, I thought I would do it here. Firstly, my thanks to the NSTP group for providing me a space at Balai Berita for my first solo exhibition, "Weekends," in 2003. My appreciation also goes out to the following people for supporting me in my art career:

Tuan Haji Hajeedar and wife
Dato' Azman Mokhtar (formerly from Binafikir)
En. Muhammad Zainal (formerly from Binafikir) and wife
En. Danny (from Binafikir)
En. Rahimi Harun
Bingley and Fatimah