SINGAPORE: Days before the opening of his first solo exhibition as a professional artist, 32-year-old Lee Wei Kong was helping to curate the paintings.AdvertisementREAD: ‘There’s still hope he can live a normal life’
“At that time, you were physically at your peak. … You wanted to be an architect,” Wei Kong’s father Lee Swee Chit, 60, said to Wei Kong as the family chatted with Channel NewsAsia. “Papa helps me a lot. I can't tell you what I want to say but Papa can tell you a lot. I can't explain how difficult it is for me to see the world. If only I could say what I say, Papa no need to come,” said Wei Kong.
“When he was in LASALLE, his mother was the one who went to school with him every day. She took lecture notes for him and taught him, and we helped him do his homework. But of course, he would do the paintings on his own. The theory part of art was done with our help,” said Swee Chit. The long-term plan was always to become a professional artist, said Swee Chit. With some help from a fellow church member, Wei Kong managed to work as a painter at Westlite, where he painted the walls of workers’ dormitories.
On display at his exhibition titled “Reminisce” are 30 pieces painted by Wei Kong in the last 14 years at different stages of his recovery.