I first saw an image of such mime artists on PBase. The picture was taken by Phil Douglis, of a street performer covering herself and her doll with splattered paint outside the Antwerp Cathedral to mimic a "Madonna with Child" painting. The image was so powerful and shocking that it left an indelible impression on my mind to this day, and I still find myself going back to view the original picture by Phil - see 'Mime, Antwerp, Belgium, 2005'.

I did not know that this street art has made an appearance in Singapore, and was most surprised to come across several such mime artists performing at Orchard Road, the premier shopping street in Singapore, when I took a stroll there recently. I took this picture of one of them, a girl miming simply as 'An Artist's Impression', her face and clothes covered entirely in a kind of silver paint. From afar, she looked like a life-sized toy figure, like part of those decorations which they display along Orchard Road at Christmas. On closer look, it could be seen that the eyes and lips were human. Although her presentation was nowhere near as dramatic and shocking as the image taken by Phil Douglis, I nevertheless photographed her repeatedly, and after that dropped a dollar note into the basket at her side, deeply conscious that it was only a small token of appreciation for the hard work of these mime artists and the considerable discomfort they had to endure, especially in the hot and humid weather of Singapore.