The farmer who paints

Ten years as a working artist

Animals came first. At sixteen, in 1996, Gene became the first person in Malaysia to breed large parrots, and was offered the curatorship of the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park. He turned it down to study art in Los Angeles.

Gene spent four years as an apprentice to Jan Steward at Dark Horse Records, George Harrison's foundation. His work has been shown by the Los Angeles galleries Wall Art and Art All Ways, which have also shown Shepard Fairey, Romio Shrestha and Retna. He has collaborated with Royal Elastics and Wynn Hotels, and founded the sustainability concept company Pamplemosses.

His range runs from oil paintings to fine pen drawings.

Coming home

After twenty years in the United States, Gene returned to Malaysia in 2020 and settled in Bentong, Pahang. Through the lockdown year he developed new art techniques, adapted his farming to the tropics, and studied how to prevent conflict between farms and wildlife.

Today he runs a 28-hectare organic farm and is bringing an old fruit orchard of durian, mangosteen and rambutan back to life. When he arrived it had been sprayed brown with poison; he stopped the spraying, and the land has grown lush and fruitful again. He draws early in the morning or late at night, at a small desk above the dog kennel.