Yeow (left), Raja Singham and Fadilah (Photo: Low Yen Yeing/The Edge)
"Every artist dreams of doing a solo show,” says Yeow Teck Chai, a self-taught painter who only fulfilled his creative desire at 68. Post-retirement, the former deputy director general of Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) has kept himself busy pursuing a hobby he used to be passionate about in primary school.
That was not all. Now 76, he has devoted his time to various fundraising activities, organising festivals and walks, as well as buying out a theatre performance. The opportunity to bring together his interests in art and charity arose when Fadilah Yakin, his former colleague at Mida, invited him to her event.
“I was already with the Society for the Severely Mentally Handicapped (SSMH) at the time. Mida held a movie screening for us and I told Teck Chai to buy tickets to support us. He said, ‘Aiyah, RM50 only for one ticket? Come lah, let’s do an art exhibition.’ I asked him, ‘Who can paint? He said, ‘I lah!’ So that’s how our partnership started,” Fadilah explains.
That casual conversation culminated in Yeow’s debut solo exhibition Art4Good: Painting from the Heart in 2018, held at Bangsar Shopping Centre (BSC) in Kuala Lumpur. He successfully raised over RM250,000, 80% of which was channelled to SSMH, which provides rehabilitation facilities for children and youth with severe mental and physical disabilities; and Persatuan SLE Malaysia, which offers counselling and financial aid to people living with systemic lupus erythematosus. “Everything sold out, and one or two paintings were stolen,” Fadilah says with a laugh as she recalls the occasion fondly.
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The following year, Yeow participated in a group showcase by SSMH alongside 21 other local creatives. When the pandemic put a stop to all outdoor events, Yeow remained steadfast in his efforts to help those badly affected by Covid-19. Thus, he decided to produce Birds of Malaysia — An Artist’s Love, a 150-page hardcover publication featuring about 130 prints of watercolour paintings of native birds and their habitats.
“Looking at the situation, I asked Fadilah, how do we hold exhibitions? So I published the book instead. We printed about 3,000 copies and managed to sell all of them without an exhibition.”
In 2023, Yeow launched his second book Let Our Children Dream, and was able to stage his third art exhibition with the same title.
Fadilah says, “It was the first time we brought in the Free Food Society (FFS), of which I am also a committee member.
“There have always been two beneficiaries involved because we don’t want to just focus on SSMH since there are many others that need help. While SSMH has been the primary partner, the proceeds are equally distributed between the charities. The artist [Yeow] only gets 20% for his time, creative effort and tools for the artworks.”
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The exhibition has expanded significantly since it started in 2018. The inaugural edition featured 50 paintings by Yeow alone, while the 2026 show will have more than 120 artworks by five home-grown artists. As Art4Good continued to scale up, they needed assistance in regard to logistics, legal compliance as well as marketing.
“We are a charity, so we don’t have enough resources. And there are a lot of things we need to sort out to hold an exhibition, from printing the paintings to drafting contracts. We were lucky to get Brickfields Asia College (BAC) to join us on this journey. They have been with us since our second showcase,” says Fadilah.
She had approached Raja Singham, managing director and chief future officer of BAC, for the additional support needed to put together a well-organised event. Prior to establishing the institution in 1991 — and growing it into one of the country’s top law schools today — Raja Singham had already been involved in philanthropic activities since his teenage years.
Naturally, BAC became a platform for him to continue pursuing his lifelong passion of helping the underserved, allowing him to reach a larger audience through education and the Make It Right Movement, a corporate social responsibility initiative officially set up in 2015. In 2025, Raja Singham organised a charity concert where he performed in a band alongside other business professionals to raise funds for 25 orphanages across the Klang Valley.
Having supported over 80 social good entities, Raja Singham says collaborating with charities such as SSMH and FFS feels seamless. “Many people found charities because their heart is in the right place but they don’t have the ability to do it right. However, because FFS is helmed by individuals like Fadilah, they run it like a corporation. They are organised and they know how to build the structure. So working with them is easy.”
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Contributing over 100 watercolour artworks, Yeow will share the concourse area at BSC with four others, namely Oon Soo Keat, Tan Ken Ming, Yoon Chooi Wan and Winsen Loke. “It’s an opportunity for us to introduce young and mature artists who don’t really have enough exposure. They are good painters but they don’t have the avenue to exhibit or sell their artworks,” he points out.
Eight-year-old Loke, who was diagnosed with global developmental delay, is the youngest participant in the show. “His mum sent him for rehabilitative training at SSMH, where we have physio, speech and occupational therapies. She also enrolled him in FriendenArt, a class that teaches children with disabilities to paint,” Fadilah says.
“We discovered that he could draw and decided to showcase five of his works. He has already sold some pieces and we were told that the funds were enough to cover the cost of a customised wheelchair for him.
“There is an issue of who’s going to look after disabled children when their parents are no longer around. So this is good for him because he can earn some money for his own use. We hope we are able to help more kids to be independent through this initiative.”
The event, running from Oct 14 to 18, will be launched by Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz, who became good friends with Yeow during his time at Mida. The former minister of international trade and industry began painting during the pandemic. In 2023, she donated five paintings from her collection to Art4Good. This year, eight more pieces have been selected for silent auction.
“We are very privileged to have Rafidah join us. It’s important that she comes in because we successfully raised nearly RM45,000 from auctioning five of her artworks alone. We’d probably need to sell about 10 to reach that amount.”
At the core of Art4Good is a group of friends who want to give back to society. “Yeow has got such a big heart, right? I counted the number of artworks he has done since the beginning and there are about 400. He is such a wonderful person and it’s nice to be able to do this together. That’s why we have continued to do it until now. This is our fourth showcase,” says Fadilah.
“It’s fun,” Yeow chimes in. “It’s a lot of work to host an exhibition but ultimately, when we see people come together and we are able to give a platform to more artists, it makes us happy.”
'Art4Good: Painting from the Heart' is running from Oct 14 to 18 at Bangsar Shopping Centre in KL.
This article first appeared on Oct 12, 2026 in The Edge Malaysia.
