Cheng-Khee Chee, globally renowned watercolorist from Duluth, dies at 92

DULUTH – Cheng-Khee Chee, an internationally recognized contemporary watercolorist with hundreds of honors — though best known for illustrating Douglas Wood’s 1992 children’s book “Old Turtle” — has died, according to his family.

He died April 6 at age 92.

Chee and his wife, Sing-Bee, who worked seamlessly by his side on the business of his art career, set up a home in Duluth more than 60 years ago with plans to someday return to Southeast Asia. By the time they decided to move on, some of their four children were old enough to insist on staying in northern Minnesota — which suited Chee.

“My dad always said the beauty of [Lake Superior] and the warmth of the people was enough to make him feel like this was his home,” said his daughter Yen Chee, an artist in Golden Valley.

Chee, who studied Chinese literature and history in Singapore, went on to get his master’s degree in library science at the University of Minnesota. He was a librarian at the University of Minnesota Duluth while also teaching courses in painting. In 1994, he left behind those jobs in favor of making art full time.

“Right at the beginning, I decided art is my life,” he told documentarians in 2015. “I will make my living something else.”

Chee painted in a large studio bright with natural light in the lower level of his family’s home, where he rolled up his sleeves and wrapped himself in a dark apron with his name stitched on the front. A visitor would undoubtedly leave with complementary prints of his famous koi, flowers and waterscapes.

Peter Spooner, a longtime curator at UMD’s Tweed Museum of Art, said Chee was a master at blending Western abstraction with Chinese brush techniques. He was a “keen observer of nature” who delighted in the world around him.

“He tried to attune himself to what he saw and painted,” Spooner said. “Not just from an objective standpoint, but a spiritual standpoint. He tried to stress that: You’re observing something in the world, yes, but also trying to interpret it.”

Spooner worked with Chee on “The Way of Cheng-Khee Chee: 1974-2014,” an exhibition of 40 of his watercolors that opened at the museum in May 2015. Among the works was a painting he made of Duluth’s Michigan Street outside the St. Louis County Depot, with the muted grey triangles of the roof’s peaks and people gathered in front on the sidewalk. The early work was first included as part of a touring exhibition by the national organization the American Watercolor Society, a show that wound its way back to the Tweed.

“People think paintings need to be beautiful and celebratory,” Chee told the Duluth News Tribune in 2015. “For an artist, a painting must be what you feel in your heart. The feeling must be irresistible, to get it off your chest.”

Yen Chee described her father as the best human. He was a teacher, a man of charisma and compassion. He was someone who brought people joy, she said. And he appreciated Mother Teresa and her quote, “We do no great things, only small things with great love.”

Chee was a popular figure in Duluth, where people frequently stopped him to talk about which of his works were hanging in their home, Yen Chee said.

“It would bring him so much joy that what he was doing in this world mattered,” Yen Chee said. “That he could bring happiness to homes. It’s a comfort to me to know that his legacy will live on in the art in the homes of people we don’t even know.”

“Old Turtle” author Wood, in a soacial media post, remembered that Chee hadn’t initially wanted to illustrate the book, but changed his mind after reading the manuscript.

Wood said he is forever grateful.

“I will remember his humility. His gentleness. His commitment to excellence,” he wrote.

Along with his wife and daughter Yen, survivors also include his children Yi-Hung, Yi-Min and Wan-Ying and 10 grandchildren. A memorial is being planned.