Arresting images? That's a fair cop for a painting policeman

Chung Kin-san has combined being both a Hong Kong police officer and a professional artist for more than 20 years. His works are in the collections of former governor Chris Patten, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and the Hong Kong Housing Authority.

In 1997, he added one more job to that list: art gallery owner and manager.

The 42-year-old sergeant says art was always on his mind. As a young man fresh out of secondary school, he worked as the assistant director in an advertising company. He completed a foundation design course at Polytechnic University (then Polytechnic College), but fate intervened before he could continue in his chosen career. 'It was not easy to find a job at that time and I was pretty lucky to get a design job, but my salary was only about $1,000 a month,' Chung says. 'Then my father got sick.' Chung's salary was not enough to support his family, 'and that is what drove me to be a police officer' in 1983.

Still, he never stopped painting. He had his first professional show in 1989, and was included in the Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition in 1992 and 1996. Chung opened his own gallery in the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 1997, which moved to its current location in the China Resources Building last year.

Chung's lifelike watercolours stood out at the Biennial, which mostly featured abstract or avant-garde pieces. 'I'm not doing things like Salvador Dali,' he says, referring to his tranquil works that combine rural Hong Kong landscapes both real and imagined. 'I want to create reality. I want the atmosphere of my paintings to imply that these places really exist.'

Being at one with nature has something to do with Chung's childhood, which was spent on a family farm in Fanling. 'What I like most is greenery, like forests or natural landscapes. I'm more sensitive to these images from nature,' he says.