Roof of the World – Journeys : New Works by Ong Kim Seng

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Roof of the World – Journeys illuminates Ong Kim Seng’s evolving engagement with the watercolour medium and brings to fore his painterly fascination with the Himalayan region and Tibetan plateau. To the Himalayan region alone, Ong Kim Seng had trekked almost ten times. He made his first expedition to Nepal in 1978, where he trekked to the Everest base camp with his easel and watercolour supplies and created over 20 paintings featuring the Everest mountains. He also visited Tibet for the first time in 1986. Due to its unusually high altitude – more than 4000m above the sea level – Tibet is often referred to as ‘the roof of the world’. Enthralled and undeterred, he had returned several more times to capture its phenomenal landscape of vast blue skies and snowcapped mountains as well as views of the majestic Potala palace in Lhasa.