Born in Hong Kong, raised in Malaysia and educated in the UK, Walter Lam’s work has always held a multicultural context, where art is a universal language shared among cultures and life is a continuous circle never broken but constantly experiencing change and growth. The artist moved to New York in 1993 and currently lives and works there.

Walter Lam was born in 1949 in Hong Kong and moved to Malaya in the same year. On the onset, his early experiences as a child living with the varying change of environments, conditioned a continual renewal of him self and consequently his art. The spiral becomes a continuous dialogue for him between life and art.

In Malaysian art today there are artists who present themselves as individuals yet still insisting a sense of nationalism in their art or what is inherent in the Malay tradition or context this however presents a dichotomy in the present identity of Malaysian art. Lam however who has lived in two separate cultures, of the East and the West maintains that art is a hybrid of all cultures coming together and art possess an universal language that is common to all cultures.

Spiral; they assume the position of 'the mortal coil', which parallels the momentum of life, for where a dynamic form of the circle allows to spread over all surfaces and dimensions. It never ever breaks it's form, it merely continues into altered and bigger spheres.

In "The Blue Rose" (oil on canvas, 1996) Lam creates a two panel painting set against each other. They are shaped in irregular geometric forms. It is the spiral that holds the two together. He uses contrasting tonal qualities and juxtapositioning asymmetic shapes in order to capture the essence of constant movement, ventures into a conditional state. Imme diately I am reminded of the relevance of Lam's work and how we are affected by the monumental change we experience daily.

"Yet perception has a history; it changes during our life and even within a very short span of time; perception has a different structure on different levels of mental life and varies according to the level which is stimulated at one particular time"

Northern Young Contemporaries, Witworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England (1971)

Tabernacle Street Studio Show, London (1974,1975,1978)

London Group at the Royal College of Art, London (1977)

Contemporary British Painting, Yamaki Gallery, Osaka, Japan (1981)

Contemporary British Painting, Nichido Gallery, Nagoya, Japan (1982)

Henri Contemporary Art, Washington DC (1984)
The Arsenal Gallery, Central Park, New York City (1992)

Quotes

"Spirals: expanding, contracting, dynamic, stylized, their various modes were, resolved by rhythms determined by an outer force like the effects of the moon on tidal waves…"