I was ten years old the first time I watched someone paint with water and pigment and make it look like breathing.
His name was Mr. Tan Kay Nguan. He's known for his crane paintings, oil on canvas, feathers so fine and full of movement you'd swear they could lift off if you breathed on them. But watercolour was what he put in my ten year old hands, and I was glad he did. Watercolour opened a brand new world to my eyes, the majestic colours were a visual feast, how the pigment bled and bloomed on paper with water, I was mesmerised by the fluidity of it. I used to sit beside him while he showed me how to hold a brush loosely, close enough to smell the water in the jar turning grey, and just watch. No rush. No hesitation. Like he already knew where the paint wanted to go before it went there.
I wanted that. Not just the painting part, though I wanted that too. I wanted to be good enough, one day, that someone would look at my work the way I looked at his. I remember thinking, quite plainly, for a ten year old: I want my paintings on a wall like his are. I want people to stand in front of something I made.
That dream didn't leave me. It just went quiet for a while.
Life did what life does. School, exams, growing up, the usual detour away from the things we loved as kids. But somewhere in there, something else was also true about me, and it took me years to notice it properly. I liked explaining things. In class, when a classmate didn't get a concept, I'd find myself leaning over, breaking it down a different way, watching their face change when it finally clicked. That feeling, of someone going from confused to understanding, I loved that as much as I loved art class itself. I didn't have a name for it back then. I just knew I had the patience for it, and it made me happy in a way that felt worth paying attention to.
It took becoming an adult and picking up a paintbrush again for the two things to finally sit next to each other and make sense.
When I came back to watercolour, it wasn't as a student trying to impress a teacher anymore. It was just me, older, a little rusty, relearning how to let paint bloom on wet paper the way Mr. Tan used to make it look so easy. And somewhere in the middle of relearning, I realised I didn't just want to paint quietly on my own. I wanted to teach it. To be the person leaning over someone's shoulder, watching their face change when the colour finally does what they wanted it to do.
That's really what Sandy Jam Art is. It's both halves of me, the ten year old who wanted to paint cranes as beautifully as her teacher, and the classmate who couldn't help but explain things until they made sense. I didn't plan for those two to become one thing. They just did, in their own time.
As for the exhibition dream, I'll be honest with you, it hasn't happened yet. I've sold pieces of my own work, which still feels a little unreal every time it happens, someone choosing to bring a painting of mine into their home. But a proper exhibition, walls of my work, people standing in front of it the way I once stood in front of Mr. Tan's cranes, that's still ahead of me. I'm not shy about saying that. It's still something I want, and I'm still painting toward it.
I don't know if Mr. Tan realises what he started that afternoon, teaching a ten year old how to hold a brush loosely enough that the water could still do its own work. But I think about him often, especially now, whenever a student in one of my workshops gets that same look on their face, surprised that they made something beautiful with their own hands.
If you've ever wanted to try watercolour but felt like it wasn't for you, or like you "weren't the artistic one" in your family, I get it more than you'd think. I'd love for you to come sit at a table with me sometime, the way I once sat beside Mr. Tan, and see where the paint wanted to go. You can find our upcoming workshops here if you're curious.