A Different View

I won’t lie! I was really bummed last year when I heard I had lost my job. Once again, I found myself going through a mental turmoil of fear, anger, anxiety and confusion. I might not have been earning a lot but it was at the very least a regular income.

The thing is, we can order our lives a certain way for so long before something comes along and upsets our equilibrium. The well known saying ‘This too shall pass...’ applies to good things as well as bad moments. Our lives are constantly in a state of flux. It doesn’t even need to take something as seismic as a pandemic to change the trajectory.

So what do you do when you find yourself at a crossroad? For some, the route forward might be pretty clear, some might stop and ponder a while and others yet might just go with the flow... whither the road might lead.

All my life I have had an interest in drawing, painting, and sketching and it was no surprise to those around me when I decided to pursue a degree in Fine Art. However, along my journey I succumbed to some apparent ‘real world’ thinking and managed to convince myself I would not make it as a full time professional artist, so decided to retrain towards a career that would afford me the nice things in life that make people ‘happy’.

Time has rolled on and with each passing year I become increasingly aware of my own mortality.  Like my job, the celebration of my milestone 60th birthday in September 2020 took a hit and had to be cancelled, but this all added to a new way of thinking. If ever I was going to make the time to fulfil my lifelong ambition of becoming a full time professional artist, that time is now!

So, on April 6th 2021 in line with the start of the new tax year, I registered with Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs as a self employed professional artist. From this moment forward, my life or at least my career as much as I could control it was in my own hands. 

Does this frighten me? Yes of course it does. I don’t have the safety net of a regular income and my monthly income is totally dependent on myself as opposed to someone else but truth to tell if an employer can make your job redundant then really at the end of the day how safe is the net?

Am I happy? Truthfully? I am ecstatic!! I look out towards the changing views of the Ennerdale Fells every morning when I get to my studio and my heart rises with gratitude. Like the changing scenes in front of me, no two days ever have to be the same. A portrait, a floral commission, or a request to purchase some work I shared a few days earlier on social media all add to the variety. If the weather is nice (I’m still a fair weather artist but hey we can’t all be perfect!), I’ll sit outside and sketch perhaps an ice cream van which will later on become the subject of a large scale studio painting. Who knows?

One thing I do know is how grateful I am to the collectors of my work who make it possible to carry on learning, practicing, and painting.
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How about you? How have events changed your life or your career? Do please post a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.