The Affordable Art Fair comes to Singapore in November which has prompted Reuters to do a little thumbsucking about Singapore’s professional class and their taste for art. Though the story is classic thinly-sourced trend piece, it does bring us two different buyers who are passionate about art and seeing it in a global context:

“The middle class everywhere is interested in quality of life and part of qualify of life is always going to have a cultural element, whether it’s watching a concert, attending an exhibition or buying art,” said Meg Maggio, a lawyer turned curator and owner of Pekin Fine Arts, a Beijing gallery. […]

“I like paintings, particularly with women as a subject. It can be mother and child, faces of women or nudes,” said Lou Dela Pena, a senior executive in an advertising firm in her late 30s. She has 10 paintings in her Singapore apartment and several more back in her native Philippines. At the inaugural Affordable Art Fair in Singapore last year, she bought two paintings for under S$5,000 each, including a stylized ink drawing of a Japanese woman by Australian artist Nanami Cowdroy that had been brought in by an art gallery from Indonesia. […]

Singaporean lawyers David Chee and wife Joanna Er, both in their mid-30s, […] have been buying art for several years and use the Internet to keep track of the artists whose works they have bought. Their collection includes two pieces by Chinese artist Li Fuyuan, whose brightly colored Chinese brush paintings of animals are now auctioned by Sotheby’s and can be found in London art galleries. Er said the two paintings by Li are probably worth more than when they were first purchased, judging by prices quoted over the Internet, although they have no intention to sell.

Affordable Art Boosts Ranks of Singapore Collectors (Reuters)