Singapore-trained, Chankerk is an expressionist with a precise sense of movement and interaction. Chankerk paints variety of subjects with expressive gestural strokes and emotion. 

" Contrary to what my friend think, I am not an abstract painter. My art is solidly grounded in my observation of my surrounding and its inspiration. The visual vocabulary come from the area in which I live and work in Asia, and the places I know well, in particular the studio, landscapes, artifacts and culture of south east asia.

My approach to painting is one of finding order in chaos. A finished painting is the result of various processes involved in the dialogue between my subject, the medium I am working with and my imagination, glance, memories, touch, wishes, fears and desires.

I paint what I believe to be reality. It isn't confined to a static and lifeless representation of a visual image. It is more of a spontaneous intuitive response of my emotion. Neither the subject, the paint or my ego are predominant in the process of paintings. I seldom begin with any set idea of how a painting should look. My starting point is usually the impulsive gestural action and paints itself, then through the process of interactions, the marks I've made and the colours and forms I've created begin to suggest the direction the painting may take.

I work with everything I can from brush, finger to a knife, which I use for everything from the thickest impasto to the most fluid glaze. It allows for an enormous range of marks and textures. Adding and removing paints are a counterpart of my process, while building up layers through brush or knife, using knife also being the perfect implement to scratch, scrape, burrow and dig to reveal the layers of work beneath.

Time is also an important part of my painting process, I feel very strongly that the more you can engage your own feeling in reading a painting, the more you become personally involved with that work, and therefore the more satisfying it becomes. Paintings in the various states of completion, cover the walls of my studio, They are then picked up again, working and reworking continues until I finally extract what the painting is about and continue to its conclusion.

I spend a great deal of time in my studio listening to each canvas to divine its particular voice. Hopefully, if the viewer is willing to devote time to my work, they too may hear something of the voice that was in my head."