Artists are sometimes like visual weather-vane or detective-researchers. Here, Ronnie Mohamad, who has an inveterate soft spot for the traditional, decided to venture all the way to Terengganu from his Selangor base to seek out Pok Man, the last of the nissang makers. Nissang is a sugar paste very much like gula melaka (palm sugar) except that the raw material comes from the coconut tree. The natural sugary taste is ideal for making the Malay kuih-muih (cakes). First, one has to climb up the tree to extract the paste. Then, the ingredient is cooked in a large kuali (pan). There is obviously a demand for it, compared to the modern technologically processed sugar. Pok Man is said to have been doing it for more than 20 years, so he is a Raja Gula of sorts. As one adept at painting figures, Ronnie immortalises Pok Man on canvas, showing him scale the tree trunk with bare hands with a cylindrical container for the nissang.   Self-taught and fulltime artist Ronnie Mohamad is known for his figure paintings on charcoal. An original habitue of the Conlay art colony decades ago, he has since set his trademark of contending rivals in tug-of-war struggles. His first solo, An Exploration was held at the PurpleHouz Gallery, Petaling Jaya, in 2013. Ronnie started making an impact in his 2018 solo at the National Art Gallery Malaysia.