"It is really important to reflect on what you really want, because there's so much that's possible." - Shinjini Mehrotra
Artist Interview Series
It’s time for another edition of our Artist Interview Series! This month, we have Shinjini Mehrotra, a writer and painter and Substacker and multi talented artist living and working in India. Her Substack,
, is filled with prompts to deepen your artistic practice.We connected on Substack, and made the time difference work so we could chat. Time zone math really is the hardest math. We had a lovely conversation spanning Substack as a business, resisting comparison, and what’s next in life.
Shinjini Mehrotra is an artist, tarot reader, writer, and podcaster based in India. As a long-time journal keeper, she believes in the transformative power of stories and the healing power of art and creativity. Her days are spent knee-deep in the creative process - painting, writing, reading, thinking, and dreaming. She tends to start more projects than she can finish, but having multiple ideas on the go is what excites her the most! Through intuitive play and playful experimentation, she aims to capture the dialogue between herself and the divine on the journal page. She's been told that her podcast, Art with Soul Podcast, is like "having a creative coach and artist friend in your earbuds," and that delights her to no end.
Note: this conversation has been edited and condensed.
Thank you so much for doing this with me. I'm really excited to chat and learn more about you. What is your job?
Thanks for inviting me, Marissa. I’m so glad to meet you! I have a regular 9 to 5 job as a business editor with an asset management company and I'm a mixed media artist and intuitive painter, a tarot reader and writer. Those are the multiple hats I wear!
With your artistic journey, was it [the painting & writing] something that, you were always into as a kid?
Writing is something that I always did. Even as a child, I loved books, I loved reading, and that fed my love for writing. For my birthday, I used to give my mom a long list of books that I wanted for my gift, and wait to see which ones she chose. As for the art, well, as children, we are all artists…all of us make art. I would not say that I always knew that I wanted to be an artist, though in some ways, maybe I kind of did. But I wouldn’t say that I was artistic. Until 10 or 15 years ago, I would not have told you I was an artist. I couldn't draw a stick figure to save my life! I came to art late in life, but the writing was always a part of it.
You said you do mixed media; I'd love to hear more about that. What was the moment where you realized, Oh, I really like doing this, this is something I want to do more of?
In some ways, even as a youngster, I kind of knew that I wanted to do something artistic and creative. When you're growing up, you think, Well, what do I want to be when I grow up? and you have these fantasies. I wanted to be an artist, or maybe a photographer, so I always had that particular creative outlet that would come up for me. But somewhere along the way, I got blocked in terms of art. I used to tell myself I cannot draw, I cannot paint, I'm just no good at this. And then one day, I stumbled upon something called altered books, which was to take old, either vintage books or books that are on your bookshelf, especially the ones you don't like anymore that you're probably just going to trash, and turn those into pieces of art. You tear out some pages, and then you work in the book. You could do things like found poetry, tip-in pages, add collage, there were tons of possibilities. I found it all very intriguing, and that was my first foray, you could say, into art as an adult. I'm based in India, and at the time, most of the people that were doing altered books were based in the US. This is the time of Yahoo groups, so it’s really way back! A lot of the supplies and materials that they used, I just couldn't find them here. So I again kind of convinced myself that I'm no good at this because nothing I make looks like anything that they are making. And I shut myself down for another 10 years.
Then, around 12 or 13 years ago, I was going through a tough phase, and was looking around online to understand what I was going through and to help myself through that process, which is when I found this site called Brave Girls Club by Melody Ross. She did a combination of art and soul classes: it was a lot of writing, but also had an art component to it. I joined for the writing, because I thought, I can't do the art, so I'll do the writing. But then I did get seduced into the art, and it was thanks to the very supportive community there. There were people who were artists who had been doing art for a very long time. And then there were a lot of people like me, who had never done art, and they did not consider themselves artistic. It was a very encouraging environment, a very supportive group. And the one message that really struck me: do not make the mistake of comparing your beginner art to the more accomplished artists that you see. What you're doing is awesome, you're beginning, this is amazing, keep practicing, and you will get to what you're now looking at. There's a time when things just strike you, and they stick. You might have heard it before but never absorbed it.
You logically knew something, but then subconsciously, you're like I finally understand this now.
Yes, yes. That is when I slowly started to actually give myself the permission to play and to experiment. And that's where I actually started this journey. So that's roughly about 12 years ago.
One thing I wanted to ask about since your Substack
incorporates both writing and art, and it sounds like writing has been a through line for you: were you an English major? Did you study English in school or was writing something that you always did on the side for yourself?Oh, it was something I always did on the side. For myself. It was something that was a very big part of my life growing up. I did communication as a major - mass communication. I initially started my career in journalism. I worked with a few magazines. And then I moved over to the corporate side. So again, a lot of writing, editing, but that's been what I turned into work, the writing and the editing.
Does what you do now have a heavy writing and editing focus? Or is the editing?
Yes, a heavy focus on editing. It's not necessarily my kind of writing.
What kind of writing do you like to do?
I write almost anything. I've never really tried too much of fiction, it's more narrative nonfiction. A lot of my writing is either something that I've gone through and I want to talk now. Or it is related to things that I'm going through, or then it's also related to things that I'm really thinking about very deeply. So pulling from different sources, and then putting my own thoughts and my own spin onto it. So I’d say more nonfiction, creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction.
When did you start your Substack?
I actually have three Substack publications! I kind of knew about Substack before it became the cool kid on the block? At that time, it was focussed on newsletters – there was no Notes, no video, no audio, and all of that. So I used it to set up two different newsletters. Then I started getting really disenchanted with Instagram. It wasn't fun anymore. You're just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. People don't read what you write or you don't get a response, which means there’s no connection. There’s the ads, all the sponsored content, and you aren't seeing any of the people that you actually follow. I'd been blogging for a very, very long time, but the views there started to decline, because I think everybody just jumped onto Instagram at some point. So that connection ended. Then I started hearing that Substack was now becoming a space for blogging, and I said, Oh, why not? Let me put my art here. Because my art and the writing that I do around it is a creative mission that I have of getting people to really connect with their creativity - whether it's through art, writing, or any format. I want people to read this stuff. That's why I decided to get everything over to Substack and try it here.
Was your blog previous prior to Substack? Was it on a website, or…?
I still have it. It’s self-hosted, but I've moved most of my creativity and art related writing onto Substack. But I still have that blog as well.
What is your main writing or artistic project that you're working on right now?
Right now the main artistic project is art journaling and junk journaling. I'm really enjoying binding journals and making my own journals. I was painting a lot of canvases, a lot of bigger paintings, but now I'm just going smaller. I really like that more intimate focus on a piece and seeing what's really happening on the page. For me, a lot of my art is almost like a dialogue with myself. When I say that I paint very intuitively, I don't step up to a page and know oh, today I'm going to draw this or I'm going to paint X subject or y subject or that I want to depict a particular thing. I come in and start playing with paints and marks and that's when things start to happen. I start to see images and patterns emerge. Then I bring it all up and out onto the page. In a way, it feels like an inner dialogue. So that's what I've been working on.
I'm assuming from what you just said that you use those journals too once you bind them?
Yes, I do. I don’t sell these journals, though I teach one of the journal binding techniques in an online class. I've also taught on a couple of collaborative classes with international artists. But right now, work keeps me a little too busy. I have a lot of ideas and not enough time to do them. But, I am also planning to quit soon. So then maybe there'll be a lot more happening.
It sounds like I've caught you at a big transition time in your life.
In a way, yes. Because, as of now, the plan is to quit next week, then I have a three month notice period, and then I should be done. I don’t already have a business going that I want to grow. For me, art has always been a practice first. It's something that I do because I have to do it. It's not that I needed the art to put the bread on the table. So even now, with this job and this decision to quit, it was more that I knew that I was done with this phase of my life. I just could not take any more. I have set things up in such a way that I don't really need to make my art pay my bills. That's important to me. If they pay some bills, amazing. If they don't, that's fine. I have other things that I'm looking into doing.
I think that if you're working on your art, you're a working artist.
I read that you wanted to talk to working artists. And that's the thing for me: I think that if you're working on your art, you're a working artist. You don't have to make money from your art to be a working artist. To be an artist, you just need to work. And that is really important to me that I keep that separate from the money. Sometimes in this day and age, even on Substack, it crosses over into everybody is growing so quickly! They all become a best seller when they turn on paid [subscriptions]. I'm not growing that fast. What am I doing wrong? No, that's not why I'm here. I didn't even come to Substack to grow. I just came so that people would actually read what I'm writing. And they are. I have a good open rate, I have a good number of people reading my words. And I don't want to fall into this comparison trap and it is easy to do that on Substack. I'm even more conscious of making very sure that I always tell myself that my art does not have to pay the bills. It's something that I want to do. I like teaching, I like filming and putting things together... the things I'm learning, I like to put it into a class and film it and share it. I would love to do some in person classes. I have a lot of ideas for those. But again, I want to remember that I'm doing this for the fun of it. I really enjoy doing this. If it brings in some money that would be awesome, if it doesn't bring in any money, it doesn't matter. I enjoy the entire process. So that's what is important to me.
It's super interesting because I'm almost in the exact opposite situation. I do enjoy teaching, and I do enjoy writing, but having to depend on them for my livelihood has gotten to be achy in a way that I can't, in some ways, enjoy them anymore. Because I need to look for places that will pay me or I'll have to look for better paying teaching opportunities. So I'm considering going back to full-time work. Obviously, there's pros and cons to that, but maybe then that would give me some freedom back to where I feel okay to create without having to worry about my rent.
I think that's really important. I think, from whatever I've seen online these days, that nuance is lost, right? We have this overarching message that if you're a creator, if you're an artist, you can make a living out of it. And that you should be making a living out of it – that is the bigger push. I'm like, But why? What is wrong with holding down a job? Even if you don't want to do it for the rest of your life. I'm 44, I have another 10-15 years of working life left, ideally, before I would actually retire. But I always knew that I don't want to be doing a job for that long, that it is a means to an end. So when I was into photography, it helped me to get all my camera gear. I love traveling, and it funded the travel. Right now, it is a means to an end. My job does not have to be about my passion project. Because then when you lose the passion, you just lose the joy, right? And you can also go into a job and say okay, I'm going to do this for the next five years, I'm going to save most of what I earned, and that can be my path for when I want to quit and do something else. And that is a very valid choice, which I think people just don't talk about anymore. And that makes it really difficult. I think you need to hear the stories, you need to hear this voice to be like, yeah, it's all right, I'm not selling out or settling. Or I'm not a fake artist just because I hold on to a job. That's really, really not very nice.
But you're absolutely right that there is this sense, even on Substack, of comparison. In the sense of look at these people who are making videos or, writing newsletters and able to make their living off of it! Which is great, but there should be this lessening of pressure of I need to get into this and immediately succeed rather than I'm just doing this because I like it.
Yes. Also constant scaling up. Like, why? If it's fun, let it be fun. To that point, you just said that I have 120 subscribers. I saw this Note by someone on Substack who said that they used to work at a bookstore where they used to do live readings. They mentioned that when they had 60 people turn up, it was an amazingly successful event. If 100 people showed up, there was no place for them to sit. We need to look at it as, Wow, 100 people, that's amazing. Why do we suddenly look at these 100 people who are reading our words as only 100? You should celebrate that instead of constantly going after a higher and higher number. And I think that's the message we’re sold on Substack. That growth is really fast, you should be able to scale up, we have so many growth tools for you! And it's fine if you don’t scale up fast. It's really all right. You should enjoy those 100 people, those 50 people, those 20 people, how ever many people are reading your words. Its amazing! At an offline event you'd be blown away that 20 people turned up to hear you read your writing. I think that nuance is totally missing in the online space. I'm part of the generation that grew up without the Internet. It's easy for me to relate back as a youngster, if someone told me that I would have over 1,000 people reading my blog, I would think, whoa, I'm a best-selling author. Now you need a million copies to be a best-selling author, but not everybody becomes a best seller. It's just like in the corporate world: not everyone becomes a CEO. You have to be a manager, you have to be a junior manager, you have to be a senior manager. Maybe you’ll get stuck at Senior Manager for the rest of your life. And you're not a failure, but maybe there is no more room for growth. And it kind of becomes like that, especially I think with a place like Substack. Because when so much of your growth is dependent on the platform itself, there comes a point when it becomes impossible to grow any more. I think we're already, all of us are reading, like 100 newsletters. I can't actually keep up with 100 newsletters, but everybody writes so well! I see so many people feeling depressed that their numbers aren’t increasing. And it's not easy. Growth is not gonna happen overnight, and it may never happen, and it's fine.
There's a couple of Substacks that I follow where I think the reason they're so successful is because they already had a business and an online platform, and they just moved everything over to Substack. Well, of course, if you already had a platform, if you already had people who knew about your offerings, your writing, etc, then yeah, of course, you're going to be successful immediately. But exactly to your point: how long did it take them to get there? I started my Substack because I had so many thoughts about books, and I wanted to share them, but didn’t have a great place to do that. I'm not really doing this for other people, I'm doing it for me. If you see it great, if not, that's also fine. I get that my taste is a little eclectic. And you might really want someone who just reads romance or someone who just reads science fiction. Those people are out there, but it's not me. So I have to remind myself that I’m doing it for me.
At the end of the day, Substack is a business. They make money when we make money, which is why they're always gonna push us to grow. Right now, the way I think about Substack is: as a free user, I'm gonna enjoy it that way. But, tomorrow, if I decide to turn on paid [subscriptions], I'm gonna come at it from a very conscious decision of knowing why I'm doing it. It might just be well, let's see, maybe one or two paid subscribers might be fun. If it grows, it's great. If it doesn't grow, it's fine. If nobody pays, that's fine, too. But just really drilling down to that. That whole thing of why are you doing something and what do you expect out of it? When Substack started, they wanted to fill a gap, which was for journalists. If you're a journalist, you will easily have 1,000 readers following you to this new place. And if you turn on paid, and you have a fan base, they will pay you because they trust your news, they trust what you say. Whereas someone like me, even though I might have been online for a really long time, I'm still a girl sitting in India writing whatever I feel like writing, because most of the stuff that I was blogging about, it was for me. I wasn't thinking of an audience. I'm sure there are other people like me, who are not focused on one specific thing, I'm sure there are other people who are multi passionate, who have similar interests. And I know a lot of people on Substack, they don't come with a built-in readership. So many people have said we came with nobody, we came with no subscribers, we came with no followers. There are so many ways to grow and so many paths to take that, that one singular message that seems to be so pervasive is very problematic.
Absolutely. Especially with this intersection between art and capitalism. You can have a sense of, Oh, I just want to, you know, do this for me, whether it's Instagram or Substack. And then you're almost sucked into well, is it your site? Are you going to make it a business? Aren't you gonna try to monetize it?
I joined Instagram when it was still just an iPhone only app. So almost at the beginning, and then I saw this whole change and transformation on Instagram as well. When people start off, they wonder oh, maybe I should actually be making this into a side hustle. And maybe if I'm not, there's something wrong with me. If I could go back to my younger self, if I could tell anybody who's younger, who's really listening to this, then I think they really need to know that that's not the only way. That's not the only thing. All of these people who are pushing you to create side hustles, or to build a business, or to scale your business, all of them are coaches. They teach that platform, or they teach business, and they're the ones who are pushing you. I'm pretty sure that tomorrow, if you start a publication that's dedicated to Substack growth, you will probably become a best seller very quickly. All of this messaging comes from other businesses that are trying to teach you how to sell a business or how to create a business or how to sell a course. And their voices are somehow the loudest probably because they're advertising and they're popping up onto your feed and maybe the algorithms favor them. But there is a reason why they're giving you that message. It's just like why McDonald’s tells you that hamburgers are good for you, that they’re not as unhealthy as they really are. I mean, it's just business. So it's not like they’re bad people or that we shouldn't look up to them. But just that it's a very incessant message that is coming from so many people, that you start to second guess yourself, you start to doubt yourself, and then you go down this road and months or years later you realize that you never really wanted to do this. You probably just get burnt out on something that you used to love doing. For no fault of yours. It is really important to reflect on what you really want, because there's so much that's possible. But we can't all do everything that's possible or achieve all of those really lofty goals. There's just so much of chance and luck that also plays a part in all of this.
If I could go back to my younger self, if I could tell anybody who's younger, who's really listening to this, then I think they really need to know that that's not the only way.
I have a question about how you stay grounded within all of that messaging. In your perspective, what have you been doing to stay centered or stay focused on your own art? In your own practice? Is there anything that you do? Whether it's I'm only going to, read newsletters once a week, or I'm not going to look at notes? Do you have any strategies that you've found useful for that?
So one is, I'm not on Notes too often. I try to just look at it once or twice a week for a little bit. Because that's where you get a lot of this comparison happening on Substack. With Instagram, it's something that I'm really limiting my time on. It's not easy. Instagram also now has this thing where you can just see the people that you're following. I try and go there. But that's not always successful, because that's sometimes very boring. It's just the way Instagram hooked their algorithms into you. I'm barely on Facebook, I'm just there for two groups that I go in and check on whenever I remember to check in. I still have my Twitter account, but I'm not active there. It's just to share some blogs, but I don't look at the main feed on Twitter. In India, Twitter’s been a toxic cesspool for so long, it's really, really, really bad, so I just avoid it. That's in terms of social media.
In terms of just this incessant messaging, I have to say that I did actually get influenced by it initially. It's almost impossible not to. So I did go down that path, which is again, probably why I'm so insistent on telling people to not make this mistake, unless it’s something they really want! What I do now is I always make it a point to first sit down and write about anything that I want to start and to really dig into why figuring out why I want to start this thing. What do I actually want from it? And not in the way that business people tell you, like revenue figures and stuff. So I journal about why I am doing what I'm doing. Even when I started my art Substack, I sat down and wrote pages in my journal on why I actually wanted to move to Substack, and what I wanted to get out of it. And anytime now that I worry that I'm not growing, or that my subscriber count is stuck, I just go read what I wrote, remember that my why has not changed. And I think that's important, because you are going to get pulled into this trap, you are going to second guess yourself, it’s important to have that [mission] written down so that you can just go and read it again and remind yourself about why you're doing something. Of course, that thing could change. But then I would say, make a note of that as well. So that you know exactly why you're doing it and what your own particular reasons are.
Then the other thing that I really like to do is one is I always ask myself, What would Vincent van Gogh do? Because he's a great example of somebody who was insanely talented who never got the recognition that he deserved in his lifetime. That didn't stop him from making his art, even if he could not get gallery representation. That didn't make his work any less valuable. But if a genius like him did not get the recognition that he deserved in his lifetime...He didn't let it let any of it stop him. If you read Van Gogh’s letters to his brother, he had his share of doubts. He got into depressive stages. But it did not stop him from creating. That is something that I always remember: what would Vincent Van Gogh do?
Then the other thing that I really like to do is one is I always ask myself, What would Vincent van Gogh do?
I also collect all of these little news stories, these little snippets that I find about people who paint and just give their paintings away. They're like, oh, we need to paint, and obviously, we can't keep all of these paintings at home. So they just give it away. Or they donate to a charity or send someone their painting. I read about this guy whose name I'm forgetting now, but I think he was a janitor. And when he died, and when they went into his house, they found his house was filled with sketches, notebooks, notebooks filled with sketches. He had written fantasy novels. And he was doing all of this just for himself, for his own pleasure. Nobody knew that he was so insanely talented. There are people like that; just doing their art for themselves, and that's valid. These are the things that I use to really ground myself and remind myself that what it means to be an artist is probably this, that you're doing it for yourself first, you're doing it because you can't not do it. You're not really doing it for money or for fame or recognition. If those things happen, they're awesome. I think Elizabeth Gilbert says in Big Magic that “I never put the pressure on my writing.” But she became “The Liz Gilbert”, she was writing for magazines. She had written a book before Eat Pray Love that hardly anyone knew about. When Eat Pray, Love became a hit, she became “The Liz Gilbert”. But before that she was still the same person. She was still doing her writing. She was also bartending, she was waitressing. She had that very clear idea that writing is what she loves. But she wasn’t going to force it to pay the bills, because that's when it gets really, really messy. So those are some of the things that I kind of remember and remind myself and I have this little database on Notion where I have all these things saved so that I can go and read them and be like, Okay, calm down.
You've answered a lot of my questions already. So you consider yourself a working artist. What do you like the most and the least about your writing and artistic practice?
Hmm, I think what I really like is the fact that I still am able to think of it as a practice, right? Because there are days when I can still be stuck. There are days when I can still hate what I write, or hate what I paint. But since it's a practice, I keep pushing through. That's something that I really like with the art - the days when you're in flow, when everything just works. I live for those and that's what keeps me motivated. I don't try and paint to a particular outcome, and I think that is what keeps it fresh and exciting. Because I never know what's gonna happen on any day, it's all kind of very exciting for me. Sometimes I give myself restrictions. I tell myself, okay, maybe let's try painting without a particular color, or let's try doing a completely abstract piece. But beyond that, I don't know anything else, I don't know what's going to happen. That keeps it very fresh. And that's important for me, because I can get bored very quickly. I'm also what they call a renaissance woman or a multi potentialite. When you're interested in something, you go down that rabbit hole and once you know what you need to know, that's it. So I rarely go in depth into anything. Because by the time I'm like, Yeah, okay, my curiosity is sated. I know what I needed to know. That's it, I'm not going to develop this in-depth, profound knowledge on a particular subject. And I like it that way. That freshness and excitement stays in the art in the way that I’ve created my practice, in keeping it very intuitive. Even a lot of my writing is like that. It's not prescriptive. I write about a lot of things. So the Substack might be focused on art and creativity. But then I have another blog where I write about tarot, and I have another one that is focused on my interest in philosophy. So I have all of these spaces where I can go and write about what I want. I have a book related Substack, so that's where my reading bits come out. So that thing of really knowing what makes me tick, and then making these practices work for me, has been very helpful for me. With the writing, especially, it has been a part of my life forever. I don't want to ever get bored and say, oh, I'm done writing or I'm done with art, for that matter. I have to find a way to understand myself and find ways to keep it interesting for me. So that is my favorite part, that I get to define what my creative practice looks like.
Absolutely. And just because I don't think I don't think I asked this specifically: you said you work with acrylics in terms of your visual art. Do you work with anything else? I think you said collage, too. But just to specify like, what media do you work with?
Acrylics, acrylic inks, drawing ink, Inktense pencils, color pencils, soft pastels. It's mixed media, so it's everything. Whatever I can get my hands on!
I was thinking Maybe I should clarify that as it also leads into my next question. I know you mentioned taking the classes, but do you do anything for your own continuing education in terms of, I want to get better at say pastels or, figure drawing, or you know, essay writing or whatever? Do you do anything for your own continuing education?
For the art, I think it's more experimental. I’m not interested in going really deep into understanding any particular medium apart from my primary medium – acrylics. If you say, Oh, do you know exactly how to use pastel pencils? Or pastels as a medium? The way pastel artists would know it? I'm like, No, I'm not even interested. I want to know what they can do for me in the kind of art that I like to do. I'm not going to use pastels on their own, it is going to be as part of a mixed media process. What I like to do is, I generally go, maybe watch a video on what the material is, see how it works. Maybe I'll read a little bit to understand things like, how do you mix pastels with acrylics? How do you fix it, or if there's anything to keep in mind, in terms of whether you can mix it with a different material. But I don't always bother with that; I just get the basics of how a particular material works, and then I just experiment. So that's what I like to do when it comes to adding more materials into my work. When I was still very new to art, it was different. I would actually sit down and watch an entire class. But now, I’ve realized that, even if I buy a class, I don’t really end up watching all of it, because I already know quite a bit of what’s being taught, you know? I prefer to either watch a YouTube video, or read, that's easier for me, to figure out how to make things work for me.
With writing, I think it's again: I just write. I have a few exercises that I've come across over the years that really stood out to me as exercises that helped me to express myself better. So I have a little list of those. And I'll go and add to those if I come across anything interesting. Something I found on Substack was and again, I can't remember who it was, but one of the writing assignments that he gives in his essay classes to students is to actually go to a bookstore or a library or maybe even your own bookshelf, and just look at six different books, pick up the first line from those books, and then use those six first lines to start off a piece of writing. I thought that was really interesting, and really different. I’ll make little notes of those kinds of things, and experiment with them. That's essentially what I do. An experimental creative!
So not as much as like a formalized practice, but more you've got enough to go off with and then you experiment.
Yeah, I don't do too well with structure.
Part of the reason I ask is because my parents are doctors. I don't know how it works in India, but in the US, you have to do like a certain number of hours of continuing education yearly to maintain your license. So every year, I would see them either attending lectures or going to conferences, so it put this idea in my mind of, oh, there is always some level of continuously learning, which I think can be helpful. Even though, yes, you have the degree, there is still this expectation of, you're not done learning. So that's why I like to ask in terms of what do you do to keep things interesting?
My dad was in the merchant navy before he retired, on the engineering side. He had to take some exams and renew his license pretty regularly – I think they had to do it every two or three years. I think it makes a lot of sense for those kinds of professions, you're a doctor, you're working with the human body. My dad was an engineer, he's working with large machines, there's just so much new information that's coming out, the technology is changing so much, the understanding of the human body is changing. You need to keep up with that kind of education and that makes a lot of sense. But with creatives, I don't think you need that rigorous an approach to continuing education. At a certain point, you know what you enjoy, and then it's just a lot of experimenting and trying new things. You might need to maybe interact with different artists or different creatives. I think at a certain age, especially with the creative arts, it just takes a little nudge for you to be ready to experiment. Once you've got the basics, there's a lot that you can do on your own.
Which absolutely makes a lot of sense. You touched on this a little bit, but just to put a more, formal point on it: What do you consider the best part about being a working artist? And what's the thing you love or dislike most about that?
I like the fact that with the mediums that I've chosen, I can just show up for five minutes. And in five-minute increments, I can create a very complex piece of either writing or art. And that really works for me. I think it'll also work for me later, when I have more time, because I have many interests, many things that I want to do. So that thing - being able to create my practice in a way that works for my life. I think that's one of the best things that you can do. And you can only really do that, I think, when you've been working at it for a while, because as you work, you will know how you work best. There are some people who need to maybe finish a piece in one go, and that's valid. And there's some people who would just like to come and do a little bit and then go back and do a little bit more. With that, you need to really understand your materials. Because not all materials are conducive to this way of working. Developing an understanding and fluency, and then creating art in a way that works for me, I think that's one of the best pieces of being an artist. What's the worst thing? I think dealing with deadlines is one of the worst things, or rather stressful things. When I teach on collaborative courses, or even with classes that I'm gonna teach, I have to be able to work on a project and edit it and get everything ready by a certain deadline. And sometimes that can be the worst thing, because sometimes you can suddenly feel like, Oh, this is not good enough, I want some more time. Working to a deadline can also sometimes impact your creativity. You can put a lot of pressure on yourself, or at least I can! I got invited to teach by one of my art mentors when I was starting out, she was somebody who really, really helped me in my journey as an artist. And then she invited me to teach on one of her programs. It was amazing. But it also put this real pressure on me, wondering if I’m good enough. That's the worst part for me, the second guessing. And the deadlines. But I enjoy the rest of it.
Which makes a lot of sense. I was thinking about this recently, and I wrote a little something about it. But sometimes restrictions can be super helpful. I know you mentioned you've been doing a lot of working on the journals. But what's coming up next for you? Do you have any anything in the works or anything you're particularly looking forward to?
I'm actually not supposed to talk about it yet. But I have a class that I'm working on, a collaborative project. That's going to be in June. I'm really looking forward to that. But what I'm really looking forward to is when I have the time to sit down with my book of ideas, and to start working on some of those things. I have a lot of ideas for different projects. The way that I do classes, or the way that I teach classes, is I teach what I want to learn. Because, again, it's just part of how I'm wired. Once I've done something, once I've learned, I'm rarely going to do it again just to teach it. While I'm learning, I can teach you, I can take you on the journey along with me. I have a lot of ideas that I’m really looking forward to working on. Some of those ideas have been fleshed out in my journal since over a year!
I've got a couple more questions, but a thought that just came up: I know you said you're gonna quit next week and then you've got your notice period, but do you have a plan for when you're officially done? Or are you going to do nothing for a bit? Or do you already have something planned out in terms of I'm gonna start on this and then that.
No, I'm going to give myself some time to destress, but then my husband and I are starting a venture together. He is into woodworking and he imports hand tools. We're going to be working on that business together. In India, the financial year starts in April, so we are aiming to get things going in the new financial year. We have some plans for tool imports, and then he also builds stuff and teaches, so we have a couple of ideas that we're going to collaborate on together. Some of my paintings, I want to turn them into 3D wooden sculptural pieces. I'm going to be doing the drawing and the designing. He's going to be doing the cutting and the woodworking part of it, and then I'll be painting it. So those are a few of the things that we're planning to do together. But I want to take a few months first to just do nothing. Read, paint, enjoy my little life. And then I’m going to pick up on some of the art stuff that I want to teach, and I'm going to look into freelancing, because like I said, I don't really want to put the pressure on the art side of it.
That's awesome. You mentioned your art mentor, so, I’m wondering if you could talk about that a little bit.
Yes. The first person that I mentioned who really helped me with the art practice was Melody Ross. I think she’s since sold the business, but at that time, it was Brave Girls Club. She was really influential in helping me to believe in myself, and actually give art a shot. And then the other person was Effy Wild, she helped with a lot of my mixed media work, with how I think of art as a spiritual practice, and also in terms of just being a teacher, because she is also like me, in the sense that she came to art late in life, she’s self-taught. In that way, I really look up to her. And I really, really admire how much she has learnt and how much she continues to evolve and really deepen her art. She's the other person that I really look up to as a mentor.
Where can people find you?
Well, there’s my Substack, of course –
I’d say this is the best place because this is where I hang out every week.
All my courses are listed on my website, which also has the tarot stuff and a lot of other writing –
My more philosophical writing is on my Wayfinding blog at
And I’m also on Instagram – https://instagram.com/moderngypsy.in and YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/ModernGypsy, which I hope to focus on more consistently in a few months!
Is there anything you wish you would have known before you started? With this journey of becoming a working artist, your Substacks or your artistic practice? Is there anything you wish you had been told or knew ahead of time?
I think it would be the bit about not getting caught up in comparison. Especially because I came to art late, so that message of don't compare your work to the work of seasoned artists – I really wish somebody had told me that! Actually, I'm pretty sure people told me that earlier, but I wish I understood it earlier! The other thing I think I wish I knew was to get very clear on whether or not I want a business or I want a following or what I want out of my art practice or writing practice for that matter. Rather than this incessant messaging that derailed me for a while, I really wish that there was somebody who actually said yeah, not wanting to turn all of this into a six-figure business is valid.
And very last question for you. Is there anything I didn't ask or that I didn't mention that you wanted to say?
Oh, I think we’ve already covered quite a lot! I could go on and on about some of these subjects, but I think that’s it for now.
Thank you again to Shinjini for joining me! And remember to subscribe to her Substack,
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Love this “I just came (to Substack) so that people would actually read what I'm writing. And they are. I have a good open rate, I have a good number of people reading my words. And I don't want to fall into this comparison trap and it is easy to do that on Substack”