This artist makes TikTok-viral rice bag paintings going for $4,200 and up
Louisa Raj, 36, is still amused by her family's reaction to one of her first attempts at painting.
"My parents said this woman I painted looked like Michael Jackson," said the artist.
Things quickly changed in 2023 once she received her first nomination for UOB's Painting of the Year, an annual art competition for Southeast Asian artists, as the well-intentioned teasing turned to wholehearted praise.
"They definitely switched sides," said the second of three children, who was nominated again in 2024, with a laugh. "It suddenly became 'oh, we always knew you could do it,'"
Six years after she first picked up paintbrush and palette, Ms Raj is prepping for her solo debut show Rice is Nice, opening at Wasuka Gallery on Jan 17.
The subject matter is a part of everyday life, yet often overlooked: rice bags from six prominent brands.
'You won't get 100,000 people in a gallery'
Ms Raj, who has 2,839 TikTok followers, has painted everything from mahjong tiles to condensed milk tins to canned drinks.
And she has already made waves online: a Jan 6 time-lapse of her painting rice bags quickly racked up at least 38,100 TikTok views.
"The best thing about social media is that you can put on a video and have 100,000 views, but you won't get 100,000 people to go inside a gallery," she quipped.
From May to Dec 2025, Ms Raj created six paintings and two sculptures for the exhibition. The paintings are priced between $4,200 and $6,800, with sculptures starting at around $3,000.
Conversations with buyers are "ongoing", she told Stomp.
The idea for the rice bag series came to her as she was walking in the supermarket and looking for inspiration. With both Chinese and Indian heritage, rice also plays a big part in Ms Raj's life.
"During Chinese New Year, we buy rice and make sure our rice bucket is full to the brim. For Indian weddings, we also sprinkle rice at the married couple."
In addition, she was inspired by these lines from a Tang dynasty poem: "The farmer works under the midday sun, sweat falling onto the soil; who knows that every grain of food on the plate comes from hard labour."
The power of social media
Ms Raj recounted how one post "(I) thought no one saw" due to its low like count, caught the attention of an art collector, who began inviting her to art events and introducing her to industry figures.
Social media also helped her to catch the eye of the Singapore Tourism Board, which commissioned her to paint a mural for the F1 hospitality suite last year.
"To have so many eyes on your artwork wouldn't have been possible in the past," said Ms Raj, who first started posting her art on TikTok in Oct 2022. Videos in which she shares the meaning behind her art tend to get the most engagement. "People relate to those more."
First in her (rice) field
For her solo show, Ms Raj began by going to supermarkets and looking at rice packaging. "I shortlisted the few that I found very interesting and very classic. Once I knew the rice bags I wanted to paint, I bought all of them."
She then photographed the rice bags, editing the photos until she achieved a more muted colour composition that suited her tastes, and began painting.
To make her paintings look more realistic, Ms Raj stretched her canvas by hand, using a technique taught to her by fellow artist Matthias Chua, to make them resemble the handles of actual rice bags.
Turning to the arts
Ms Raj, who is married, does not have a background in the arts — she attended Nanyang Business School and majored in actuarial science.
Actuarial science is a field that uses mathematics, economics, and business to assess risk, primarily in the finance sector.
Inspired by Filipino socialite Heart Evangelista's paintings, Louisa began attending night classes at Lasalle College of the Arts in late 2019, learning from veteran artists such as Matthias Chua, Mohamad Quthubdean M F (Quthub), and Dominic Thian. She also studied with these artists privately until 2024.
After selling her first painting in 2020, Ms Raj continued to see artwork sales as "one-off". It was only after her social media reach grew and commission requests came in more consistently over the next few years that she decided painting could be a career.
Since then, she has produced multiple painting commissions, such as for a man who wanted Ms Raj to paint his living room – full of Hello Kitty and fortune cat figurines collected by his late wife – as a gift for his daughter's new home.
She typically charges upwards of $5,000 for commissions, depending on the size and complexity of the artwork.
Ms Raj balanced painting alongside her job in finance and tech before deciding to move into art full-time in 2025. But pragmatism still rules — while she respects those who embrace the "struggling artist" trope for their practice, she insisted it is not for her.
"I made sure I had a runway of savings before doing that," said the artist, who believes strongly in fiscal responsibility. For now, she appears to have no regrets moving from a stable paycheck to the relatively unstable world of art.
"Singaporeans want to support local, and I hope more do that," she said. Even as buyers are keen, all Ms Raj hopes for is that people walk through Wasuka Gallery's doors – something they can do for free.
"I just hope people drop by, feel the paintings and tell me their stories."
