My Business: Story, Brand, Vision
I don’t think it dawned on me way back then - when I took my first painting intended for sale to the Westminster City Council to get the licence to sell in London’s (then) famous Sunday Bayswater Road Exhibition - that I was beginning to create and define my brand.
Art and craft shows in and around London were always happening at lovely venues and participating as one of the featured artists gave me an opportunity to showcase my art, meet my collectors in person and connect with the people with whom I felt the real sense of belonging, like with no other group outside my family - the artist community. They always felt like coming home.
But now I was stepping onto the much bigger scene, standing shoulder to shoulder with the established artists who were creating and selling art for 30+ years. I thank the universe for keeping me blissfully unaware that this was the tender shoot of the brand that will become an established, defined, and redefined - over the course of the next two decades.
As life tested my resolve to go for the biggest dreams inside me, it also schooled me in more ways than you can imagine. After all, who has a real use for the messenger who didn’t live the experience, for the teacher who didn’t venture outside the textbook?
Art was the light that led me from the dark place that I found myself in from 2007 through 2010. Even in the darkest of those personally challenging days when the responsibility in front of me (and the power of love inside me) didn’t warrant the option to break down. So, even when I discovered that the situation I found myself in was abusive in every sense that word suggests - I didn’t feel like a victim. There was no glamourous or dramatic end (at least not on my part), just a sober sadness that despite honestly investing the best I had inside me - I just could not turn my marriage around and continue to be the best role model for my children.
In the broken pieces of my reflection, I saw my strengths - and started to rebuild and put together each piece with love. I knew that to give love you have to start with yourself. Voluntary work, and particularly the three I will mention here (at one point I had four regular voluntary jobs) allowed me to hold myself together, to mend and heal, to return and recognise who was I now after 15 years of losing the identity, and to start growing again.
First voluntary job: art teacher with the Damien Centre (which is a charity organisation helping poor, homeless and disadvantaged here in London). The number of real friends equals the total number of people I met during that year. It was one of the most fulfilling things I did to date.
The second voluntary job that led to permanent employment: 1-1 activities co-ordinator in a residential care home, working with elderly and dementia and Alzheimer's patients. I don’t have words that closer describe my feelings than rewarding, pure love, and humble gratitude for the blessings I received on a daily basis. My spirit was healed by my friends and my soul is inseparable from all of them. There is so much love we found, shared, and included and moved everyone who came into our circle.
The third voluntary job was a driver with another charity organisation that is operating inside London’s Hyde Park. Having an opportunity to be the insider (outdoors mostly), to get to know the architecture, every single garden both Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, every tree, path, building, statue, animal, fountain, all of it, and to have access all areas…. It was another dream within a dream. Being part of that, whilst helping people who were visiting the park, connecting with many souls as their personal guide - was a privilege not many will have.
What I didn’t know back then, but I do know now - is that these years were building my brand from within. These were the roots of Indigo & Verdigris. This fine art brand is a personal journey of overcoming adversity in an elegant way. Yes, suffering greatly, but never indulging in that suffering. Finding focus through it to work on figuring out what the lessons were, who have I become as a result, and if something didn’t feel like me - identifying the strange object and shifting the belief from what was no longer resonating, to something that was back in alignment with my inner being.
This process was hard and long. But only those who have walked that road know that it takes years. Even though the change happens at the point you make a decision, believing in your heart that was the right decision, trusting that guidance - but having to work through every single obstacle in the way, every doubt, every perceived limitation, every dead-end, every ‘Sorry, you’re not the right fit’, every no acknowledgment rejection which seemed even harder than the polite refusal wishing you well in your job search, etc.
Until one day, many years later - years of putting one foot in front of the other in the right direction, years of building one stone upon the next, one at a time - you stand back and see this castle towering over you. Bloody hell!!!! Did I really build that? And single-handedly! That’s nice - what can we do with it?
Now that we have all this capacity to reach, invite, share, give back - let’s do just that.
The story always had one more up than there were downs. That’s it. That took me all the way back home. To my true self. That is what a personal brand means.
The work you do as an artist, a teacher, an author - is the stamp of authenticity of that personal journey. The emotion of my story is not unique by any stretch of the imagination. Many, many parents (too many, sadly) are now going through what I already went through and came to the other side. Many artists are starting their journey - a journey that I have been on for 20+ years. Many teachers have shared their stories, and I am just beginning to share mine.
The reason is you. If you are there where I was, in that dark, scary spot when all the lights went out and I knew this is the rock bottom - I want you to hear this story. It is not over for you. Like a phoenix, you will rise, but unlike me - you don’t have to walk that path alone. I have walked those steps, and I am here now. I can show you the way out of the scary darkness into the light of your own being. The light is inside you, I promise you. I see it, and I can help you to keep it alive and restoring it to full radiant beam once again. I did it and look at where you will be one day too.
Indigo & Verdigris has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of Galeria Katarina. Its core values of love and the return to innocence (journey back to self) have been painted with every brushstroke, rolled down to the soul with every tear, and shine through every word. This is the vision of finding the power we left behind, reconnecting with the biggest dream, and following our hearts. Both of us, my friend. I am not going to the top without you standing there with me!
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