By:
TNP PHOTO: Kelvin Chng
As a fire raged, Singapore’s first million-dollar painter made a conscious choice between art and life, and chose life.
Mr Tan Swie Hian, 69, saved a stray cat first instead of his precious paintings when a blaze broke out yesterday at Telok Kurau Studios, an artists’ community.
The 1987 Cultural Medallion winner then returned to retrieve six paintings, which he estimates to be worth about $9 million in all, from his personal collection.
He told The New Paper: “If my house is on fire, I would save the cat. Between life and art, I choose life.”
Last month, Mr Tan's painting, When The Moon Is Orbed, was sold in an auction in Beijing for $3.7 million, the biggest sum paid for a painting by a living Singaporean artist.
Read the full report in The New Paper on Wednesday (Jan 16).
