Malaysian painter Khoo Sui Hoe died on May 31 at his home in North Little Rock, Arkansas, at the age of 86. An influential presence in the modern art scenes of both Malaysia and Singapore, he is remembered for a six-decade practice that defined a distinctly regional yet outward-looking visual language. 

Born in 1939 in Baling, Kedah, Khoo attended Han Chiang High School in George Town, Penang, before leaving Malaysia in the late 1950s to work and study in Singapore. In 1959 he enrolled at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, where he trained until 1961 under pioneering figures such as Cheong Soo Pieng, Georgette Chen, and Chen Chong Swee. His emergence on the Kuala Lumpur art scene came in 1965, when he created the major commission Children of the Sun for the newly built Singapore Conference Hall, a project that consolidated his reputation.

Over subsequent decades he developed a body of work, largely oil on canvas, in which distinct, stylized figures inhabit flattened landscapes, sustaining a tone of youthful innocence and dreamlike nostalgia. His paintings entered significant public collections, including Penang State Art Gallery, Kedah State Art Gallery, the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang, the Singapore Art Museum, the National Gallery Singapore, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

Alongside his studio practice, Khoo played a key role in driving artistic infrastructure in the region. He co-founded the artist-run Alpha Gallery in Singapore in 1971, established Alpha Utara Gallery in Penang in 2004, and initiated the Utara Group to bring together artists from northern Peninsular Malaysia.

In 1974, supported by a John D. Rockefeller III grant, he undertook further study of postwar art and printmaking at the Pratt Graphic Art Center in New York, deepening his exposure to international practices while maintaining a strong attachment to the landscapes and communities of his youth. Throughout his career, Khoo often acknowledged how his formative environment continued to inform his imagery. Even as he settled in the US in 1982, he returned repeatedly to memories of Baling and to a broader Southeast Asian sensibility. “I am aware of where I was born, how I was brought up, and the land of this region,” Khoo told The Star in August 2019.

Joyce Lee is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.