Can arts like painting and writing earn enough to sustain in today’s world? Breaking the traditional myths, Janice Ferro has chosen the less-travelled path and made inroads into the combined world of beauty and brain
Janice Ferro, a full-time content writer and a freelance artist inherited her late grandmother’s green thumb and artistic streak, leading her to a childhood spent in the garden observing the plants and animals, and developing her painting skills. Awed by the beauty of nature, Janice was inspired to embrace art, and start as a freelance artist in 2020.
“Since then, I have been commissioned for paintings on canvas by Starbucks Asia-Pacific and Starbucks India for the Campal store, and Mumbai-based First Edition Arts for their ‘BluePlanet’ series, and creating and selling my work, which largely focuses on the environment, mental health, and body positivity,” shares the 25-year-young artist from Dona Paula, who post-graduated in English with Communication Studies from CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru in 2023, and is working in a Goa-based communications agency as a content writer. Her content gets published on blogs, magazines, websites, social media and newspapers. Her writing primarily focuses on art, culture, sustainability and environment.
Painting primarily on canvas with acrylic paint, Janice has also undertaken a couple of digital art projects. The self-taught artist began painting when she was just four, and developed her style through practice. However, her schooling days were filled with guidance and encouragement from art teachers, Amalia Nazareth and Glenda Stuart.
It began with the common drawing of an island in the middle of a sea with a coconut tree on it and a sun peeking out of one of the upper corners of the paper, drawn with wax crayon, to playing around with paints, pastels, colour pencils and more, till I developed a particular style in my late teens, that blends realism and surrealism.
Janice recalls that her first commission was from Starbucks Asia-Pacific and Starbucks India: “They discovered my work through Instagram and reached out, commissioning four 16”x16” canvases in an Azulejos style made out of coffee botanicals, with three animals – the Bengal tiger, African elephant, and quetzal – representing the regions Starbucks operates in, and a coffee botanical to tie them all together. Recently, author and former journalist Mayabhushan Nagvenkar commissioned me to create a stylistic map for his ongoing live novel – Goa < 2075.”
Using social media, and word of mouth to sell her art, Janice takes anything between a few hours to days to work on a piece of art till she is satisfied that it has turned out into a masterpiece. The sizes of her paintings differ. She has painted on canvases as tiny as the palm of her hand to four feet tall. Painting on larger canvases can be tricky as the dimensions and perspectives of the subject need to be plotted out properly from a distance, she admits.
How does she charge for her work? Janice learnt to make a rough estimate for charging for her paintings from her cousin, Eureka Alphonso, a professional graphic designer based in Mumbai. “I charge for the art supplies utilised, the time taken to paint, excluding break periods in between, and my skill-set and multiply that by ten. I believe that artists are often overlooked for the contribution their work makes to society, and everyone wants to own a particular painting, but doesn't want to financially acknowledge the skill, experience and sheer time behind that work,” explains Janice, who has so far accepted mostly Goa-based commissions. However, her work has eventually found homes in Canada, France and other countries.
Working from home, Janice prefers to paint in a space with her family milling around, as being locked up in one room for an age would result in cabin fever and an art block. She puts her work out on her Instagram and Facebook pages, and through Behance, a site for sharing creative portfolios. Clients usually approach her online through these accounts. If it's in person, it's usually family or friends.
Is there any scope for the type of work Janice does in today’s times? Pat comes her reply, “Painting by hand retains value in the digital age. There's a certain charm to paintings created by hand, that you can appreciate the sheer time and artistry it takes to do so. We need to learn to continue to create with our hands while simultaneously growing alongside digital methods of art creation, as creating art is intrinsic to our being and has been so for millennia. There are also plenty of artists who combine both traditional and digital art forms, and I can foresee myself utilising this route as another way to create art.”
The subjects of her artworks are rooted in the environment, mental health and body positivity. Having grown up around nature, playing with the little critters in her garden she now notices that there's been a severe decline in the population of butterflies, beetles, snails and sparrows. Highlighting how important conservation of the environment is one of her primary objectives. As an artist, a majority of her inspiration to create art comes from the natural world. She taught herself complementary and contrasting colours through simple observation of the natural world, which is an incredible teacher.
For Janice, painting is a very intimate form of catharsis that words can sometimes fail to express. “Content writing is her current full time job; however, I want to eventually make art a full-time job and also plan on merging art and writing and seeing where that takes me,” shares Janice, who does her best to stay true to her ideas. Not discouraged if she doesn’t see constant sales, she knows there are ebbs and flows to creating and selling art, as there is to any job. Yet, she is optimistic that art can turn into and is a full-fledged business.
