On one shelf sits a circle of multicoloured Vans sneakers, interlocked to form a sort of wheel with their laces woven into a lattice.

“That one has no name yet. I’m still working on it, I still have to paint them,” says the man next to me. Nearby, his daughter sleeps soundly; we speak softly so as not to wake her up.

This place, a shoplot converted into an art studio-cum-apartment, belongs to Malaysian street artist Donald Abraham.

His wife and daughter stay here with him; a section of the spacious lot has been blocked off and turned into a bedroom.

The floor is mottled with colours and paintbrushes litter the floor.

FMT is here to talk about his life’s work as well as his collaboration with Subang Jaya-based band Son Of A Policeman (SOAP) for their work in the Tiger Jams competition.

Tiger Jams is a regional music competition organised by Asian beer label Tiger Beer that will see three Malaysian bands working together with acclaimed bands and artists from Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong to produce musical and visual collaborations.

“You can look through my sketchbooks and see what you like,” Abraham tells SOAP frontman Joshua Jarrett Ganesan, who is also there to discuss his work.

He pulls out a box full of his watercolour pieces. “Here, you can look at these, too.”

Now in his 30s, Abraham has been drawing since he was five, “before I learned how to read”, he says.

“I learned to read quite late — when I was in primary school, I think — but I was already drawing before that.”

Despite only beginning his professional career in art in 2007, he has been sketching for years, using whatever time he had while juggling jobs in construction as a welder and fitter.

Abraham’s claim to the street art scene lies mainly in his personal affinity for skateboarding, having skated since his teenage years.

His manoeuvres at the time took the form of painting skateboard decks for friends. He moved to canvas and sculptures after a skateboarding injury.

“Are you involved in the KL graffiti scene?” I had asked Abraham earlier at his studio in Ara Damansara.

He was raving animatedly about an American photographer who he admired for her photographs of graffiti all over the world.

“No,” he said. “I personally think it’s a little bit of a waste of money.

“Spray paint is expensive. Besides, I don’t want to show off all my art. Some of it is personal, I’d rather keep it for myself. But I did give it a try last time.

“I’d like to explore 4D art,” Abraham added with a smile.

“Sculptures that take on the added dimension of smell. But not now. I’ll see how it goes. You know how it is — you get bored with one medium, you start exploring others.”

We talk later at his studio over cigarettes at his window, with him blowing smoke through a special smoke box he built into the windows for ventilation — further demonstration of Abraham’s skill with his hands.

Nearby stands a makeshift second floor built out of wooden boards, supported by metal struts and held together with too many brackets to count.

It was hastily built, he says, laughing. “I wasn’t too sure how strong it was going to be, so I just slapped on as many metal brackets as I could,” he says.

Stacks of canvas paintings sit on it, accessible only using a metal ladder nearby.

One of his paintings is an untitled piece that features Prime Minister Najib Razak as the face of a gigantic, brightly coloured robot, surrounded by workers attempting to repair it.

He’s not a particularly political artist, Abraham says; the painting was only a product of its time.

“It’s about how Najib used to be the hero, you know? But now they’re trying to fix his image,” he explains.

He nixes an attempt to take a picture of it. “I’d rather not get in trouble for this. People are getting arrested for their political artwork, after all.”

Abraham’s other, less controversial pieces are no less impressive. They are, however, equally abstract, unreal and distorted expressions of life.

I regretted asking him the typically bald and uninspired question of: “What inspires your work?”

“Life,” he replies, shrugging.

I suppose I shouldn’t have tried to contain his work within such a question. Nevertheless, his answer is probably more than adequate, considering the chaotic sense of life his pieces exude.

“I strongly express myself with colour in a disorderly and naked manner, by the purest spontaneity of my subconscious mind, without technicalities or rules.

“Simply by letting the lines and strokes flow through my hands,” I read much later from his online profile, posted on an art gallery’s website.

“The artist is just a vehicle for wonderful work of art, and what really should be valued is the creation in its entirety, the work in its pure and natural form, not the artist as ‘master’ but rather as a disciple of this supernatural force and pure talent.”

I remember reading something like that earlier in his personal notes in his sketchbook. I wanted to take a picture of them, but felt that reproducing his sketchbook notes would be somewhat passe.

His daughter runs helter-skelter across the studio to him, giving him a great big hug. The bubbly two-year-old is finally awake; we weren’t quiet enough.

Abraham’s wife smiles at us. “Sorry for disturbing you,” I apologise quickly. She waves it off. “It’s okay. He warned us visitors were coming,” she says.

Carrying his daughter in his arms, Abraham explains his other works. He learned a great deal from his mentor, prominent Malaysian artist Yusof Gajah.

“I took inspiration from his work for that one,” he says, pointing to a small painting of an elephantine figure.

His art style has developed much since his early works, but retains traces of Yusof Gajah’s chaotic abstraction, a bright mish-mash of colourful patterns and characters.

Abraham will be bringing to life the “indie-rojak” quality of SOAP’s music in the Tiger Jams collaboration, which will see his artwork displayed in the Aug 6 showcase with Singaporean mentor band The Sam Willows.

It will have an urban, DIY feel to it, with his bright and colourful characters and patterns set against a backdrop of repurposed industrial decorations.

Looking at Abraham’s artwork, it should be interesting to say the least to see how he intends to bring the band’s distinctly Malaysian music to life.

“Life”, after all, seems to best describe both his and the band’s work — a chaotic, supernatural force of art.