Namiko Chan Takahashi

Biography

Takahashi’s first major prize was the United Overseas Bank Painting of the Year award, presented on 9 September 2006. The President of Singapore, Sellapan Ramanathan Nathan, handed over the award at a ceremony at the Esplanade theatre. The prize went to “Charisse”, a portrait of a nude Black woman in whom the artist wanted to show, in her words, the “inner strength and determination” of women of substance. The model was her friend, whom she had met at the Art Students League of New York.

Takahashi was born in Singapore in 1974, to a Japanese mother and a Peranakan father (the Peranakan being a long-established Straits Chinese community). In 1991–1992 she studied at National Junior College, on the Art Elective Programme. She then entered the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore. She did well, but did not intend to become a lawyer: at the university she worked with textiles and in theatre, and she made jewellery and sold it to fellow students. After graduating in 1997 she began a pupillage at a local law firm and left six months later. To save for further study she went on selling her own bridal jewellery designs and taught jewellery-making. In 1999 a grant from the National Arts Council helped pay for her courses at the Art Students League of New York. There she painted under the American artists Harvey Dinnerstein, Ronnie Landfield, Daniel Greene and Mary Beth McKenzie. She finished the course in May 2002 and returned to Singapore.

In November 2001, before her return, her exhibition “My Life as an Artist in Context with the Will of God” was held at the Art Seasons gallery. It showed a series of expressionist oil paintings made during her years at the League. She gave her work “Uma” to the law faculty in honour of her teachers there, and the faculty in turn bought the painting “Untitled 4” in memory of two late colleagues, Ricardo Almeida and Peter English. It seems to me that this exchange shows how she kept her tie to her earlier studies after leaving the profession.

A portrait of her friend, the Singaporean singer Kit Chan, was used as the cover illustration for the singer’s album “Dreamscape”. Takahashi is an elected member of the International Realism Guild.

Outside painting, she co-founded the contemporary Christian a cappella group Agapella: fourteen members, all young professionals. Under the name Alaka’i Kapuananiokekukui Namiko she directs the Singapore branch of the Hawaiian hula school Laniakea. She also trained for many years in ballet, flamenco and Middle Eastern dance, and she teaches hula under the direction of her teacher, Kumu Lei.