"I love painting our beautiful planet," shares Jeanne Tan.

Her deep connection with the environment is rooted from her upbringing, watching environmental and social documentaries with her family growing up. At 18 years of age, an interest in diving blossomed, triggered by curiosity on why the Anilao reefs were so pretty and colorful.

Since then, she has been involved in numerous environmental projects such as being illustrator to the children's book, The Jin and the Turtle (project of WWF Philippines and Bookmark), and painting for Walong Filipina, paintings of eight male environmentalists, each one done by a different Filipina painter.

In her current exhibit at 20SQUARE, Water Windows, we are given a glimpse of what Tan sees when looking at the environment. Her paintings take us around the Philippine waters in places such as Dumaguete, Antipolo, Palawan and even water sceneries from Tan's imagination.

For actual locations, her interpretation of the image is what we see. This is applied in Shhhh, where she kept the structure of the wave but changed its color from browns to dark blues.

Noticeable in her set of paintings is Marcos Highwayscape and A Promise of Sunrises.

The prior is a scene from the recent Philippine's Ondoy tragedy. Like the other paintings, you can see water, only this time it doesn't symbolize life, but the thousands of lives it took from the Philippines.

The latter depicts the mangroves in the Philippines currently being been cut and used as firewood. The same plants are essential for new born fish as defense to their predators, so awareness on its preservation should be promoted.

This is perhaps why Tan is so passionate about the environment: "I'm alarmed at the pace at which pollution, acidification, overfishing and deforestation are increasing. These creeping threats have been changing the world at a faster and faster pace," Tan inputs.

"Am I passionate about the world? I love it here, and I don't know where else we could move to once we're done messing up this world. I do wish we had a bit more respect," the artist adds.