The artist’s vision is to display the powerful, personal yet universal emotions of happiness, pain and loss, but tempered with hope, through abstract color and shape involving an interplay of raw emotion with artistic control. Cloud of Jewels comprises around a dozen abstract, acrylic on canvas works ranging up to 122 X152 cm in size. The works focus on textures, movement and captivating hues over abstract images in three series depicting Conception, Departure and Courage.

The process of painting these works has, for Lim, involved a meditative conclusion to life-changing events including devoting four years of her life to humanitarian aid work in Pakistan and Africa with Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), and, later, nursing her dying mother, Madam Monica Chang a music and art teacher, during a lengthy illness.

About the Artist:

Florence Lim is a Malaysian painter based in Singapore who is devoting herself fulltime to art after earlier professional careers in nursing and communications.

In particular, six months working in West Africa doing medical fieldwork was a life-changing experience. Upon her return in 2008, she began the series of works that make up Cloud of Jewels.

“Painting is an internal dialogue occurring between my heart, my mind, my hands, the medium and the canvas. My spark for painting comes from life events I encounter on a day-to-day basis: From people who I meet, be they strangers or acquaintances; or from nature in abundance. I walk to different parks every day. The spark could come from anything; from a broken wing of a butterfly to a half-eaten fruit left by an animal, or just people in motion” , Lim avows.

The artist, who has painted or drawn since childhood, and who is self-taught, cites as an influence the late French painter, Séraphine de Senlis, an early 20th century naive artist.