Giant Cartoon To See - The big mural at Newton MRT station in Singapore

The tiny tasters of this artist's amusing artwork are along the corridors at Newton MRT station.

 The small ones make me keen to see more of the artist's magestic mural, which sails passes too quickly when you are on the escalator.

What the passener sees. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

As you - actually I mean I - rush out to a meeting, you have no time to stop and enjoy even the small ones. Everybody is too busy, being Singaporean and kiasu, meaning keen get ahead or don't miss out.


But coming back late evening when the crowd has thinned out and you are not in such a harry to arrive on time. So you can take a leisurely look and, in my case, take a photo.

I dodge around, trying to stop the reflected lights runing the picture, to also minmise distortion from looking up or looking sideways. My husband has a professional picture editing program you can use to minimise distortion, but it takes half an hour per picture, which would be fine for a rofessional photography being paid, or an amateur entering a contest, but when you want four pictures for a blog post, and so spend less than three hours on one post, not such an urgent task.

However, seeing and photographing to see later the big mural is more of a challenge. I usually rush towards the downwards escalator on the Downtown line. This time, by chance, the word serendipity, meaning happy chance discovery, I found out the secret. Because passers-by kept scurring across my photographic line of vision, instead of stepping forward as usual, I stepped backwards. The further I stepped back, the more of the mural I could see. Although each individual bit is smaller, and the x shape of the crossing escalators is visible, you can see the scale of the entire mural.

I was delighted with the effect. I hope you like it, too. \the itneresting lesson is that an indoor mural is like an outdoor mural from a photographer's point of view. Better to step back and ensure you have at least one shot of the mural in its entirety.

If people are in the way, never mind. That gives you a sense of scale and height. Every time I look I see something new.

How lucky we are to live in this era.

Useful Websites
Getting to Singapore
singaporeair.com
MRT map
Wikipedia information on the Newton station and artists
Murals of Singapore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murals_in_Singapore
Murals by country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murals_by_country

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I can give a talk to any business or college in Singapore or worldwide about the artiwork on the MRT train stations, the statues in the streets, and murals worldwide.