Charles Cham

THERE IS NO PAINTING WITHOUT DRAWING.

"I believe that drawing is thinking and painting is feeling. Therefore, I draw what I think and paint what I feel. Drawing is the idea, the thought. Painting is the emotion, the expression. As there is no feeling without thinking, there is also no painting without drawing."

Charles CHAM started painting at the age of five inspired by the first movie he ever saw. It was a story about an artist with a magic brush and everything he painted became alive. He painted birds and they flew away. He painted fish and they swam away in the river. Finally he painted a woman, she became alive and they fell in love. When Charles came home that day after the movie, he started to draw a portrait of the painter on the floor with some cake powder belonging to his mother. That was his first portrait.

After working as an editorial artist for a few years in Kuala Lumpur, he went to France to paint. He became a member of the Association des Artistes Indpendants in Aix-en-Provence and exhibited in the Salon des Indpendants in 1990 and 1991. In 1993, he set up his studio in the old quarter of his hometown in Malacca, Malaysia, and named it The Orangutan House. In 1995, he mounted his solo exhibition Yin Et Yan...

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1993 Paintings of Malacca, Air Keroh Expo Centre, Malacca.
1994 Yin-Yang Paintings and Drawings, The Spice Route, Malacca.
Nudes and Portraits, The Spice Route, Malacca.
1995 Yin Et Yang Et Cetera, Creative Centre, National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur.
1996 Recent Paintings, The Orangutan House, Malacca.
1997 Charles Cham: Yin + Yang, Art-2 Gallery, The Substation, Singapore.
Yin-Yang Paintings, Framed Gallery, Darwin, Australia.
1998 Primitive Forms, Modern Feelings, Ganesha Gallery, Bali.
Recent Paintings, The Orangutan House, Malacca.
2000 Yellow Culture, Art-2 Gallery, The Substation, Singapore.
Yellow Culture, Karin Weber Gallery, Hong Kong.
2001 The Yin and Yang of Charles Cham, Galerie LeonArt, Basel, Switzerland.
Exposição Lusófona, Galeria Municipal Gymnásio, Lisbon, Portugal.
Fantasies and Realities, Framed Gallery, Darwin, Australia.
2002 Opposite Attraction, Ganesha Gallery, Bali.
2005 Ballads, Karin Weber Gallery, Hong Kong.
Ballads II, Art-2 Gallery, Singapore.
2008 Faces To Figures, Karin Weber Gallery, Hong Kong.
2012 Selfless Portraits, Karin Weber Gallery, Hong Kong.
Face To Face With Charles Cham, Art-2 Gallery, Singapore.
2013 Negaraku, The ...