LAI KUI FANG’s Serangoon Gardens home is just the sort of place you would expect an artist to live in. From the rickety silver metal gate, the old car parked in the cement driveway to the clutter of paintings on the crowded walls of the terrace house, everything seems to have landed there by chance, the owner too engrossed in something else.

But it’s easy to see what he’s preoccupied with. In the porch, a huge oil painting of a lady reclined on a couch strikes the visitor, with its vibrant colours and composition. And in another room, the beginning of a portrait of President Ong Teng Cheong awaits Lai’s attention.

“That one’s commissioned by the History Museum to be displayed in 1997,” offers Mr Lai, gazing at the already distinct likeness of President Ong. “I paint the back ground and his clothes from a picture, but for his face and hands, I have to get a van to bring the painting to the Istana and have him sit for me.”