"The Cat Like Fish"

Being a cat lover, I naturally pay attention to artwork using cats as the theme.

I discovered this lovely piece in an art magazine in Malaysia. At first I thought it was a painting, but when I read the article, I learned that the work, called "The Cat Like Fish", is a piece of batik art. Batik is an ancient art form which involves the application of wax in dyeing fabric. While the artist, a Malaysian Chinese called Chuah Thean Teng, is well known for his batik art, it was, according to the magazine, a cruel turn of fate that led to him practising the art. During the 1940s, the batik factory that Chuah Thean Teng and his relatives closed down after only one year of operation because of stiff competition from Indonesia. In ordeer not waste the unused materials, he started picking up the art. The rest, as they say, is history.