by Kirby Lindsay Laney, posted 15 June 2015
At booth B-21 of the Fremont Street Fair, artist and poet Vikram Madan hopes people will stop by. “I want to invite people to stop by. It is whimsical and humorous art for the young at heart,” he explained, “very reasonably priced.” As a newly introduced talent in the Pacific Northwest art world, Madan wants to get his work in front of people, “and connect with my audience,” he said, whoever they may be, and wherever they may be found.
“I’m enjoying it so much,” Madan reported on the networking and interaction required for a working, earning artist these days, “but I still wouldn’t call myself an extrovert.”
An Artist Is Made
Madan only started, full-time, as an artist in the fall of 2014. “I quit my career in 2012,” he explained, after nearly two decades in software. This sea change came for Madan after a trip to Paris in 2010. “I had my ‘ah-ha’ moment,” he said.
The museums, and the wealth of art, spoke to him and reawakened a desire within him to create. Always before, when he’d needed to know something, he’d read a book, but this time, to learn to draw and paint, he sought a more hands-on method. He found Gage Academy of Art, “and I found the instructors, and the other students, helped.” He started with a class in acrylics, he recalled, “I really liked it, so I took another.”
Madan struggled to improve his natural skills – learning to see, learning to draw, and controlling the materials – but also with himself. He had to overcome his own limitations; including overcoming his fear of failure so he could keep trying. He also struggled with his frustration over the slow progress of a part-time student. “After a year or so,” he said, “I felt ‘I have to go do this.’”
With a wife and children at home, and coming from a culture of self-sacrifice, Madan wrestled, for a long time, to balance his own goals and those of his family. “Trying to rationalize wasn’t working,” he finally said, and he decided, “people quit their jobs to start businesses – they make those leaps of faith – so I decided to treat it as a start-up.”
Now On The Path
“I can’t predict what is on the path if I’m not on the path,” Madan observed. He took the leap, to quit his career, work full-time on art, and see where it leads. “I wrote a book of poetry,” he explained, then he went out to sell it, learning how to get it to an audience after he published. “When a confluence of events that has to happen, happens,” he said, “you have to try.”
“I’m sure nobody looks back and says, ‘I really wish I didn’t do it,” Madan said about launching his ‘art’ business. Gage did give him instruction on how to sell art, in today’s market, and use modern tools to build a following. He’s studied the gallery model, but he observed that, “a gallery can only give you a show once in two years,” and signing with one gallery can prevent an artist from displaying their pieces at other venues.
Other models, for displaying and selling art, also exist. Madan brought his art to the Center of the Universe show at Fremont Jewelry Design as part of the Fremont First Friday Art Walk, and now he’s doing a fair circuit, having been in the University Street Fair, and scheduled at Pride Fest. “I see all models in the art world,” he observed, “I don’t know what works for me, so I’m going to try everything.”
All About The Art
The whimsicality of Madan’s work could make him a popular stop among vendors at the Fremont Fair. His paintings, many done in smaller scale, capture tiny, elf-ish creatures in the midst of madcap adventures, or in random prosaic poses. “If it doesn’t have the whimsical aspect,” Madan said of his art, “it didn’t feel like me.”
While at the University of Washington, Madan did cartooning, published in The Daily. Still, when he started painting he thought he’d be drawn to doing abstracts, yet his two big abstract works remained long set aside, needing something. Recently he revisited them, giving them a curious sort-of absurdist face-lift that, for Madan, finished them. “Humor is important to me,” he has realized, “I’m trying to make the world a better place one bit of shared beauty at a time.”
Visually interesting, Madan’s pieces also stand out for their titles – clever phrases or witty observations on the works. “They add a dimension to the piece,” he agreed, “I used to work as a cartoonist, so it comes easy to me.”
See them for yourself at the Fremont Fair, on June 20th & 21st, on N 34th Street between the Burke Building and the Seattle Art Car Blow Out display. Also, check Madan’s website to learn more about his art, and poetry, and where he will appear next.
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