Belinda Low is a 60-year-old mural artist. She calls herself an "accidental painter" who has no formal art training.

Low taught herself how to paint at the age of 55, after her two sons had grown up and started leading their own lives. She is particularly inspired by the Impressionist works of Van Gogh.

She told the BBC: "I used to look after them, cook for them, and do everything for them. But they've got their own activities so I was left on my own most of the time. So because of this, I went into painting."

Murals of a bygone era

Today, Low has completed over 40 murals around the city and in HDB estates. Her murals tend to feature a Singapore from a bygone era.

Like this mural in Kreta Ayer titled Labour of Love, featuring a back alley, with a lady sticking on Chinese New Year decorations. This mural was inspired by a photograph of Singapore in the 1960s.

One interesting feature is the bicycle signage, which is a permanent fixture, that has been incorporated into the mural.

This mural below, Our Home, Our Community, is of Holland Village with the iconic Chip Bee Gardens apartment block hiding behind the umbrella.

It also depicts a cobbler based on a real cobbler who took over his father's dying trade.

According to Low, five of the characters in this mural were based on real people living in the area. The cat is also a neighbourhood cat named Hamlet.

Holland Village

Another one of Low's murals, Spiritual Reflections, shows Singapore's Holland Village fused with a village from Amsterdam. Notice the iconic red Holland Village block and its iconic fake, and unfortunately, demolished windmill.

According to an interview with The Straits Times earlier this year, Low tries to feature "strong women characters" in her works, such as this one below, One Tough Lady, featuring a samsui woman. The work can be found in Chinatown.

Low also does commissioned pieces for businesses, such as Cali Cafe and Bar at 24 Jalan Mambong. Low wrote that this piece was meant to evoke a sense of people watching while customers sip their coffee or beer.

My Neighbourhood - The Way It Was is a mural representing the artist's growing up years.

The old lady sitting in the left hand corner represents Low's maternal grandmother. Some of the minute details include the vintage biscuit tins and a teh tarik man.

Murals that preserve collective memories

Low is not the first to use murals as a way of preserving memories of past Singapore.

Another local mural artist Yip Yew Chong has been making waves for his beautiful site-specific works which can be found at Kampong Glam, Tiong Bahru, and even the Thian Hock Kheng temple.

According to Yip, drawing murals is an attempt of recreating what we as a society has lost in our relentless pursuit forward.

“Singapore is moving really fast. Too fast that some of the things got bulldozed along the way. Only years later we regret and rebuild, recreate...

For example, we’ve built the Bukit Timah Expressway in the middle of the forest. What do we do now? We try to bridge it with the bridge. The eco-bridge. The eco-lane. To link the animals’ movements and plants’ movements… We destroy, only to recreate many years later.”

- Yip, in an interview with Mothership.sg

Similarly, Low, in the BBC interview, talked about how her murals show "what [she] did as a child" and how it was "a happy time for [her]".

Interestingly, both Low and Yip are self-taught artists. Despite showing creative talents when they were younger, both took on full-time, "practical" jobs and only started painting later in life.

As Singapore gears up to start safeguarding our local intangible cultural heritage, it is time to start paying more attention to preserving heritage beyond wall murals as a community

After all, as demonstrated by Low and Yip, better to start late then never.

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All images, otherwise stated, are via The Art of Belinda Low Facebook page