Artist whose sketches are a record of Hong Kong history over the past 70 years
Kong Kai-ming has been an artist for so long – he sketched Shek Kip Mei before the 1953 squatter camp fire – that he sees himself as a historian too. A new exhibition shows how his pen captured a changing Hong Kong
For more than 70 years, Kong Kai-ming has been sketching Hong Kong, from its mountains and villages to its urban buildings, many of which have fallen victim to development. But he is philosophical rather than sentimental about their loss.
“When you live as long as I have you begin to see the development of a city as an organic and dynamic evolution like other life forms,” says the 86-year-old Hong Kong-born artist.
“Everything has its own lifespan and when it comes to an end, it’s time to say goodbye. It’s the same with old buildings; when they are no longer suitable for preservation, it is time to let them go.”
Kong, who graduated from the Hong Kong Fine Art School in 1954 and has spent many years as an educator (he taught at the school and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong), uses a wide range of mediums, from fountain pen, pencil, watercolours and oils to printmaking.
However, it is for meticulous landscape sketches that he is best known. This month, 30 of his works will go on show in an exhibition, “A Trail Of Memories – Hong Kong Landscape Art by Kong Kai Ming”, at the Tiancheng International art gallery in Central from September 29 to October 5.