Passion <-> Profession

I have been a painter all my life, a consultant for 4 years, and this is my short story.

Let's rewind the clock 20 years. Back in school, painting was my thing. I was active in art classes, participated in state level competitions and would like to believe that maybe I was good at it :) Art gave me a sense of calm and helped me deal with teenage anxiety and awkwardness. One of my doting aunts once said "you have long fingers, you will become an artist".

But as I grew older and entered high school, pressure to compete and become an engineer became life's mission. As does (or did) for a lot of Indian students. I left art completely all the way through undergrad and grad school. Story continued throughout my journey of making a career in the US and eventually giving it all up, moving to India and getting another graduate degree. While I was making strides professionally, art had taken a backseat.

Until I met my wife who asked on our first date about my hobbies. The faint memory of painting, the smell of oil paints, the calmness came gushing back. I told her that I used to paint in my past life. I had become a strategy consultant by then and the struggle of solving client problems and working hard to make it big was priority at the time.

My wife was not impressed by the answer. She encouraged (pushed) me to pick up the brush again even if it meant doing a little on the weekends. And then it all began..

What started as a weekend activity has become my everyday passion. You will always find a WIP canvas hanging in my home office which I work on to destress between work calls and definitely after a hectic day.

As I reflect on how my seemingly different worlds co-exist, I realised that they in fact fuel each other. Three things stand out for me:

1. Patience: I may end up spending over 100 hours on a large artwork and have to stay patient (yet attentive) as colours blend, the textures start showing, the balance of life and still becomes congruent and the light becomes perfect. Staying patient and keeping at the artwork is key to success. This helps me handle the pressures of my consulting job - staying patient with seniors, clients, peers, mentees, administrative systems, priorities and so on. Its easy to crack under the pressures of a consulting career, but I would like to believe art has helped me navigate the deep waters with calmness.
2. Storytelling: Consulting has taught me the criticality of storytelling. Data analysis don't mean anything until a clear, simple story doesn't exist for clients. This has come in handy for my art. Before I start a new artwork, I now pen down the story I want to tell, the emotions I want to evoke. Then comes the data aka colours to enable me to tell the story effectively. Story First, Data (Colours) Next.
3. Top down and bottom up: Art and consulting both use a fair mix of both mindsets. Both as an artist and a consultant, I need to create a top down view first and then think about how to use the right elements to create the bottom-up. This ability to think of the overall picture and then decompose into elements is a skill that I use everyday as an artist and consultant. And I have only gotten better at it.

Writing this article for those who are struggling with choosing passion over profession. In my experience, the two don't have to be mutually exclusive, but rather mutually beneficial.

I would be remiss if I didn't share the link to my Instagram art page: The.Weekend.Hues . Sharing a few works here, hope you enjoy!