Martin Loh does not know whether he will ever be able to exhibit his paintings of male nudes publicly in Singapore, but the uncertainty has not kept him from producing his potentially controversial canvases.

"This is who I am," he says. "I believe the art must be truthful. It doesn't have to be a window to my soul, but being what I am, I think I should celebrate the male form."

Loh is one of Singapore's best known and most prolific artists, and local as well as overseas buyers have been collecting his work for the past 10 years.

Previously, he has drawn upon his Peranakan (mixed Chinese-Malay) background to inspire his work, but turning 50 this year has given him the impetus to break new ground in this conservative South-east Asian society.

"Now I'm fifty, I'm getting rid of the guilt," he says.

His portraits of male nudes are daring and sometimes graphic, filling the canvases with an erotic energy.

One reviewer, writing in a local magazine, said Loh's subjects "are not just represented in all their full naked glory" but that the artist emphasises certain parts of the anatomy through blatant enlargement.

Loh has a complex heritage and has lived a colourful life, which is reflected in his work. Reds, yellows and blues leap boldly from his canvases, in a variety of media and in a style that has been labelled naive, perhaps for want of a better description.

"When the galleries became interested in me, they needed a way to describe my work and they settled on the word 'naive' because I'm self-taught. I didn't mind. I found I could live with that," Loh says, laughing. "But sometimes it has been stifling because I couldn't move on to other things, other styles."

A stockbroker

A slightly built man, with an engaging smile and expressive eyes, Loh also works as a stockbroker, and today he is seated in the lobby-cafe of the huge United Overseas Bank (UOB) building, which gives a panoramic view of the historic Singapore River.

On the far bank are gleaming modern skyscrapers, and outside the building, an imposing metal statue by Salvador Dali stands guard. It seems a fitting place to be discussing art.

"I am always aghast at the idea of people circumscribing taste," Loh says. "In this system you have to know how to limit yourself, but these political questions aren't my main concern. The main concern is how to survive as an artist. Politics hasn't crept into the work although I am a political person."

Loh's early themes are of Peranakan life — the life of the descendants of Chinese immigrants who settled in Malacca in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and who married local women. Their descendants adopted the local customs and language, but kept many of their own traditions, giving rise to a unique culture.

Loh grew up in this culture, born to a Peranakan mother and a Cantonese father. His early paintings show various representations of Peranakan households, with the mother figure nearly always being central to them. Much of his work up until now has depicted mother-and-child relationships in a domestic setting.

"This wasn't something I set out deliberately to do," he explains. "It just came from the heart. But it seems to have struck a certain resonance not only in Singapore but elsewhere."

Vivian Wong, a Singapore-based Canadian businesswoman who is familiar with the artist's work, says that Loh's paintings are "very South-east Asian".

"His art is local but it will have international appeal because it is unique," she adds.

Won scholarship

When Loh was young, he had no idea he would become an artist. In fact, he studied history at the National University of Singapore, subsequently winning a Fulbright scholarship to pursue post-graduate work in the United States.

He did both a master's degree and a doctorate in history at the University of Washington in Seattle but says he had to return to Singapore after five years as his scholarship was bonded.

His Ph.D. allowed him to get a job "quite easily" with the Singapore Ministry of Defence where he did research on various countries in the South-east Asian region, with the purpose of helping to inform policy.

But he says that his security clearance was not renewed when it was discovered that he was homosexual. He later got a job in journalism, writing editorials at The Straits Times , the government-sanctioned national newspaper.

This job required him to be present in the newsroom only in the afternoons, and so he began painting as a way to fill the time until he had to go to the office.

Journalism paid for the art, but after two years, Loh says he found it difficult to "subscribe to one view or the other". He deliberately chose his next job, as a stock broker.

"I thought I must find something that gives me independence at the end of the day, whatever my views or whatever I am, and brokerage does that."

He currently works at the UOB Kay Hian brokerage firm, one of the largest in Singapore, where he buys and sells equities for a group of clients.

First show

In any case, by 1992 he had amassed enough work to hold an exhibition and his first show was titled 'Naive Images of Days Gone By'. He says he sold every painting.

"I didn't know how to price," he says, smiling at the memory. "They were really cheap. But I asked myself, why was there this resonance? Why had no artist taken the Peranakan woman as subject? Was it because of how they were taught at art school? It dawned on me that there was a positive side to not being formally trained."

Since then he has had an exhibition nearly every year (in Singapore and also in Thailand), and some of his paintings are on permanent display in restaurants, clubs and other venues in the city state.

The Singapore Art Museum, which collects contemporary art by local as well as other Southeast Asian artists, has also acquired some of his work.

The success has caused his work to rise in value and some buyers have complained that he has become too expensive, as his smaller paintings (measuring about 30 cm by 20) go for an average of 2,000 Singapore dollars, while the larger ones fetch 5,000 dollars and above. But Loh defends the prices.

"It's up to the artist to protect price structures because if you reduce the cost it's not fair to other buyers who have paid so much," he says. "Still, the artist has to survive and these are difficult times, so sometimes I say to a buyer, tell me how much you can afford."

His next show, slated for later this year or early 2003, should reveal his new direction to the public.

But he is unsure whether admirers of his work will take to the male nudes or whether he will even be allowed to exhibit them publicly. So far, they have only been shown in private expositions, where viewing was by invitation.

"My pain and my bane in this society is that as I get older I become less like the rest instead of more like the rest," Loh says. "But you cannot take life too seriously."