Her favourite YouTube show is playing on a tablet placed right in front of her, but Fern Wong hardly pays any attention to it. With a penknife in hand, she makes small slits on a piece of paper before carefully removing a tiny cut-out that measures barely 1cm.

There are no sketches done beforehand. Every slit with the pen knife seems spontaneous yet, as one will later find out, precise to form a complex pattern. The delicate paper cuts are then coloured using felt-tip markers or acrylic paint.

Fern, a visual artist, devotes hours to cutting and colouring every day. Still, finishing a piece of work can take months, as she seeks perfection in every detail. “It’s not difficult,” she told CNA during an interview at her home. “I just feel happy.” Without formal training, she simply does “art from the heart”, her parents said.

The self-taught artist has won several local and international awards. She is also a regular at exhibitions organised by ART:DIS, a local non-profit organisation dedicated to creating learning and livelihood opportunities for persons with disabilities in the arts. “Her works have always been one of the first to be sold,” said ART:DIS executive director Angela Tan.

Fern began showing an interest in drawing when she was young. “She was doodling all over the house. There was once when I opened my Bible one Sunday and I found a new design inside. It was all Fern’s geometric drawings,” dad James Wong said. Her parents decided it was time to furnish their daughter with proper drawing materials.

As Ms Wong progressed from regular drawing paper to larger canvases, geometric shapes remained a fixture, which she complements with the technique of colouring in small and distinct dots. Her parents are unsure where Fern gets her inspiration from but noted that she is a “very serious” artist who guards her style fiercely.

“I don’t know how her mind works when she’s doing her art, but what we know is that she is always happy and that is why her work is usually very vibrant and colourful. When you see a patch of dark colour, that is when she is sad, likely because she got a scolding from us for sleeping late and things like that,” Mr Wong said with a chuckle.

It was in 2015 when Ms Wong stumbled upon the art of paper cutting. “The story behind that was that she was left alone after my husband went through a major operation,” her mother recalled. “All my attention went to my husband, so I forgot to replenish the drawing papers for Fern. Even all her markers dried up.”

So Fern made do with what she could find at home – old church bulletins, scraps of used paper, scissors and a chipped pen knife. On her own, she developed a new artistic style. One of these creations won a top prize at the UOL-ART:DIS Art Prize last year. The winning piece is currently on display at an exhibition organised by ART:DIS, aptly named Turning Points. Other paper cuttings by Ms Wong are also on display via two hanging installations.

“The installations help to create a sense of movement to the paper cuts, giving it a sense of the lightness and joy. You also have the light reflecting against her work to create shadows,” said Ms Tan from ART:DIS. The allure of Ms Wong’s paper cuts comes from a “pure passion to create” and a style that is uniquely hers, added Ms Tan, who has witnessed the evolution of the artist’s style.

“Fern has never received formal training in arts … so her work doesn’t have complex write-ups around what it is about or what it’s trying to convey. It’s a pure emotive response to create and she does that religiously every single day.” Through its exhibition, ART:DIS hopes to showcase the talents of non-mainstream artists like Fern and ultimately, bring about inclusivity in the local arts landscape.

“She had the least at birth, but she now has the most peace and joy in her life, and that matters a lot to us,” Mr Wong said.

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