Nicholas Choong
Adept at drawing at an early age, Nicholas spent most of his childhood and teenage years drawing and painting in watercolors. As a youth, he was fortunate enough to be left alone by his parents - to his own devices, exploring creativity and curiosities which has led to his voracious appetite for making things of art and beauty.
In college, Nicholas studied the social sciences (psychology, philosophy, sociology), literature and loved maths - which has nothing to do with an art practice but which nevertheless informs his dialogue with his mediums and practices in his work today. After college he worked in the entertainment, media, events and post production industries, picking up relative skills like photography, graphic design, video production / editing, music and dance performance and music production which he has vigorously applied to his arts practice today. Not having had any formal arts education or training, Choong can be considered a self-taught artist.
Choong has always been guided by an intuition, a calling from within to produce something as a form of expression. Experimentation is a very important influence in Choong's work and he is not afraid to try new, uncomfortable ways of doing things. The fact that change is inevitable is at the core of Choong's work ethic and he constantly challenges himself to create new forms of work and to push the boundaries of his comfort zone at all times.
Choong has also drawn from his experiences as a resident artist at Sembilan Art Residency Programme in 2016 and from his 3 month artist residency stint at Rimbun Dahan in early 2018. Not one to rest on his laurels, Choong continues to work in acrylics, watercolors, ink, oil, appropriating found materials and producing works on surfaces as diverse as paper, canvas, aluminium, medium density fibreboards as well as on plywood.