In Part One last week, I gave you the context around which I’m writing this series of blog posts. What my original plan was, how the journey began and progressed till I realized how deep I’d dug myself into an amazing art-hole! Continuing from there.
THE BROOCHES ARE BORN
Sometime around the time I had painted my first 8 inch diameter canvas is when I got the idea that I must not share it online. So I didn’t. Instead, to help keep the conversation going on social media, I started painting much smaller round pieces and showcased them online in the form of my mini-painting brooches.
The first brooches announcement was made, again, on Instagram, on 27th of March, 2019. Not having decided packaging or shipping and having only published tentative pricing, I was perplexed when the brooches received EIGHT customer orders within 48 hours of the announcement. Suddenly, the pricing was final and I now had to figure out everything else to make this work. Hell, within 4 days of announcing the brooches, I went to Chandni Chowk to figure out what kind of boxes I could procure with the least amount of pain.
April and May were spent in a brooches-haze. I had ideas and those ideas needed translation and execution. The packing was sorted, the shipping was sorted and people wanted to spend money on my brooches!
The Horizons Series of Brooches was the first series that I announced and launched. I did not expect sales and did not expect to do additional series until after my solo-exhibition. Yet, as I type this in June, in addition to the Horizons Series, I have also released brooches from the Blobology Series and the Cake Series and the Dots Dashes Series and I have another yet-to-be-released series sitting in storage.
REFOCUSING ON ART
In June, I refocused on my art series. Most of my paintings are at various stage of finishing. Some need just one more layer of varnish. Some need final touching up and line-cleaning before their first layer of varnish. Some need a layer of matte varnish spray for separation before I apply the second pass of paint. And most are still blank canvases, stacked against the wall of one of the least-used rooms in my apartment.
All this while, I could not stop thinking about what to do with the art I was making. On the one hand, it felt like I was doing a disservice to my paintings by not sharing them with the world. There was also just way too much stress about the “solo-exhibition”. The process of painting became something I HAD to do, to keep up with the timelines for the exhibition that actually only existed in my own head. It became WORK. The level of desperation of wanting to take it back to meditative lines that brought me “inner peace” was at its peak.
I decided to take out a couple of days to do some research online and reach out to a few artists whose work I respect. The overwhelming majority said something on the lines of, “Sell first, show later.”
Like my photography mantra of “Shoot. Edit. Share”, I had found my art mantra.
After thinking it through for a few days and talking some more to my trusted inner circle, I decided to take the plunge and launch the “solo-exhibition” on social media. Which, basically, involved deciding pricing and taking photographs of the pieces and publishing these on my Shop and sharing social media updates about the piece.
TO BE CONTINUED
In Part Three next week, ( look for it next Monday ), I share a bit about how an artist’s journey, traditionally, culminates into their first solo show. Also shared are some reasons why my decisions were not so traditional and what I am thinking from a business point of view, when it comes to my art. Part Three will be the concluding piece in this three-part series.
