She was in her dream—a fairy falling; no, drowning in the sea. Her hair swirled about the water, but her face looked calm. Deeper and deeper she went, but no one witnessed her death. She was silent, trapped in her own time and space. Yet, she was described beautiful.

Around this time, her creator was a nobody—a teacher who quit teaching, an artist who earned nothing, a painter who experimented with what some called an “illegitimate” medium.

“That painting,” Sosie Plata pointed at the drowning fairy, “that made her cry. What you’re seeing, I think, is her third try.”

Sosie, the mother of coffee painter Sunshine Plata, described her daughter a go-getter. Sunshine never stops until she finishes what she determined to do, she said. She had been like that even when she was young. And though the attitude sometimes caused rifts among the four siblings, it undoubtedly pushed Sunshine beyond her limits.

“In that painting, she saw defects in her first try… ‘Why won’t it dry up?’ she would ask. But she did not stop until she perfected the process,” Sosie added.

Finally, on Sunshine’s third try, the colors became distinct. They were no longer just brown. The entire work came to life with different shades of brown.

“I myself got so amazed,” Sosie recalled, her eyes that of a proud mother’s. “She can really come up with beauty in this whole brown material. I saw that it was talent that was coming out. This is so unique.”

For Sunshine, however, it would take another year before her craft caught anyone’s attention. The drowning fairy hung silently above the family piano from 2007 to 2008. It would be joined by a number of others as Sunshine’s works accumulated, and her painting style seemingly unappreciated.

“I thought of having an exhibit for my collection but that meant paying for the venue, the food, the flyers and the invitation. It was too much for me that time,” a bubbly Sunshine said.

Then she thought of asking help from the food giant, Nescafe. After all, she was using their coffee product for her paintings, she said. To her delight, the company liked the idea. As exchange to their sponsorship, Nescafe asked Sunshine to paint for them a farmer harvesting coffee grains. This painting became the face of a new line of coffee products Nescafe launched.