BOUNTY POND

 

Bounty Pond, acrylic on canvas, 2026. 36" X 24"

This painting portrays several fish offering shrimp up from the water to hovering kingfishers, cleverly riffing on the bird's Malay name: "Raja Udang," which translates to "king of shrimp." The pond is bountiful with food such as fish and shrimp, and it is surrounded by vibrant orange bird-of-paradise flowers, standing cattails, and water snails.

The core theme of the painting is ecological role reversal and comedic survival, which subverts the traditional predator-prey dynamic. Instead of birds diving to hunt fish, the fish voluntarily offer shrimp to the kingfishers in a desperate, humorous strategy to appease the birds and escape predation.