The epilogue to my first exhibition

That’s it, I’ve done it, I started practicing oil pastels in June 2023, shortly after the birth of my twins, I had a mad desire to paint, if not now, I never will.

I’ve always wanted to try exhibiting in an art fair, and a few years ago, when I went to comic book fairs or photographers’ fairs where they sold their self-published books, I had this urge to do what they did. My father is self-employed, and I used to watch him do his accounts every month, sorting through his invoices. It’s obvious, I want to reproduce this lifestyle.

It took me a year to master my oil pastel set, every brand is different, every paper is different, you work in the shadows for days on end, trial and error, until you find a technique you like to reproduce. We always start from scratch, and our motto is “trust the process”.

Doors open to the public at 3pm, I arrive on site with my father at 1pm, everything has to be set up, and I hadn’t thought at all about my scenography. It’s a stressful time, because all the artists around me, who are used to art fairs, are busy drilling holes in the walls with screws.

I’ve got a hammer and nails…ERROR!

I’m lucky enough to have a father who’s a handyman and always has everything in his car. He says “hold on”, and comes back with screws, screwdrivers and tells me we’re going to do it the old-fashioned way, by force of arms.

I didn’t have a level, or a tape measure to measure the distances between the paintings, so I improvised an cheat sheet, on a scotch marker, with a hole to define the position of the frame hook, I drew a line to define the top of the frame. It works!

In an hour and a half, we managed to assemble the whole thing. Now I’ve got my second problem: I haven’t printed all my certificates of authenticity. My certificate of authenticity had to be forgery-proof, so I decided to print it on beige laid paper, and put my logo on it with an embossing press.

I called a printer 10 minutes away on foot, who kindly accepted my laid paper, except that on checking my certificate of authenticity, I soon realized that it had a white background, so I quickly redid the PDF with a transparent background sitting in my booth, and ran to the printer. In the meantime, I ask my father if he can fetch my embossing press, which arrived 20 minutes away. He kindly agrees to brave the traffic jams for me, and brings it back around 5pm.

I’m finally settled in my stand, there’s a lot of traffic, lots of people stopping by, and I’m enjoying explaining my approach, my practice and the history of each work. My father hands me my embossing press and I start pre-filling the certificates of authenticity one by one. A man in front of my stand sees me doing this and tells me I look like a teacher correcting his papers, which makes us laugh and takes all my stress away.

My fellow artists around me are all friendly, there’s no competition between us, we each tell our own story. I have very good memories of it, I managed to sell 4 of my works, I’m so satisfied, it validates my investment, it validates the fact that I believed in myself, it validates the fact that I didn’t give up a week after buying specific pastel oils.

I’m going to open my online store soon, and sell the rest of my first drop.

Painting at home is good, showing your work to the world is better.