One month since I took the leap…

Since I started my business nearly 3 years ago, I had been running it alongside my career as a fashion buyer.  I love fashion and always will, but it was time to give my art and my business the focus and dedication it deserved.  So at the end of January 2023, I said goodbye to not only being a fashion buyer, but to the colleagues I had worked with for 10 years, whom are now incredibly important friends. 

It took me months to decide to take that leap, months of fighting the decision I knew I had to make because I still loved my job.  I loved the variety it brought me, the places it took me and the incredible people I got to meet and the challenge that being a buyer is.  But I had to realise that I now loved my art more. 

The last year has been mind blowing for me, with the opportunities it has brought me, the projects I have been able to work on and the directions my art has taken.  I realised that I wanted more of that and to share my work with more people.  Unfortunately though, I was already working 7 days a week and had long forgotten what ‘switching off’ and ‘relaxing’ were… So there really was only one thing to do and that was taking the leap.

Since I left my beloved career, I have never been more sure that that it was the right decision.  Even more exciting projects have started flowing through to me, I am having time to nurture existing connections which is very important to me.  But it has also meant I can branch out into other areas like my painting workshops.

I have been able to run two workshops already in the last month and they are even more rewarding than I anticipated.  People have said to me, aren’t you worried someone will steal your techniques?  My answer to that is very firmly no.  Painting brought joy to me in one of the darkest times the world had seen, Covid 19.  You don’t have to be an artist, or even ever have picked up a paintbrush before, un-leashing your creativity is incredibly soothing and therapeutic. 

I have already had guests from the workshops saying that they for the first time in as long as they can remember, they felt like they switched off for the few hours they were with me.  Their busy lives and their stresses just being put to one side for a while.  That is why I paint, and that is exactly why I want others to discover the power of art.  Not only the power of art but the power of my subject matter, the ocean.  If I can do that and help people to re-purpose something they already have in their home and stop it ending up on landfill or polluting the planet then I am a happy Artist.

Ironically, all the things I loved about my job as a buyer I am also finding in my new Artist life.  The variety of every day being different, one day immersing myself in painting for 8 hours straight, to the next being out and about droning or visiting suppliers.  I am meeting so many incredible people, clients and other creatives.  And I certainly have no worries about it being a challenge…being a business woman is most definitely that!  Finding the balance between my craft, painting,  and everything else that comes with running a business is a constant juggling act.

But I am taking that challenge on with relish.  And to anyone who is scared and doubting taking a leap, you know when the time is right.  Don’t let fear stand in your way, because once you leap there could be something even better on the other side waiting for you  🙏🏻