Painting Fairies (and How I Came Up With My Artist Name)
“Summer Tunes”
This is my fairy painting called “Summer Tunes”. It was painted during the spring of 2013. I remember it well because I had a rather traumatizing encounter with the principal of the school where I was studying to become an art instructor. Long story short, she bullied a friend of mine and when I reached out to outside sources for help she started tormenting me. I left a month before graduation. They mailed me my diploma. This principal forced me to listen when she spent an hour listing all my flaws as a student and as a person. It was the first time I ever met them and talked to them. Let´s just say I understand why my friend had a mental breakdown.
That was one mean woman and me and 10 other students actually ended up filing a group report against her. The lesson of the story, when a person in power tries to put you down don´t let them bully you.
That was the not-so-nice story behind this painting, but let´s talk about fairies. When I was a teenager I had a “fairy era”. For a couple of years, I only painted fairies. I read about fairies in different cultures. I saw dreams about fairies.
My artist name is “Fairychamber” and I've had this same artist name since I was 14 (way over 20 years, which is insane). My first blog was called “Fairychamber” and that´s where I posted my fairy paintings. There is a Finnish singer and a songwriter who has changed their stage-names four times. In one interview they said that they changed their names because they had renewed themselves many times, but it hasn´t always been beneficial since in the eyes of the public, the singer changing name often was confusing and even seen as a publicity stunt.
I´m not a singer or a songwriter. I am an illustrator so I probably would not have similar problems if I would decide to change my artist name but I haven´t really had the desire to change it. I have often wondered if “Fairychamber” is too childish? but when I tell people that I was basically a child when I came up with it, they are often impressed that I was branding myself at 14! thought I had no idea at 14 what branding even meant.
There have been times when I have thought of changing it, but I think it´s pointless, and might actually hurt my brand. One of my YouTube followers told me that they started to Google me when they heard the name “Fairychamber” and it stuck in their mind. I have a Japanese-Canadian artist friend, her name is Mayumi Ogihara and she told me, one of the problems she had for using her birth name as an artist name is that a lot of people may forget it or misspell it, but it´s still more fitting to her brand.
I have a Finnish first name and last name. 87% of the time non-Finnish speakers misspell my first name. 5% of the people send me another message afterwards where they say “sorry that I misspelt your name” (I have to say I love those people). When I lived in the UK I got so used to people misspelling my name that I don´t even care to point it out anymore and I misspell people´s names by accident. I know it can happen to anyone. That is one of the main reasons why I use my artist name online instead of my actual name because of the search engines. When I look at my website analytics, the number one keyword people are using to Google my content is “Fairychamber”, which means that branding was successful.
Despite the bad experience with the principal, I had a good time creating this fairy. It was a time when I was developing my painting skills. There are multiple layers of watercolour and the fairy and the foliage is drawn with markers. Since then I have used this technique in my other watercolour paintings but I never seem to capture the magic and the feeling as well as I did with this particular fairy.
Things got a lot better when I left that toxic school. During that same summer, I got an opportunity to travel and do some volunteer work abroad and it became one of the best summers of my life with an amazing group of people. It was a completely different environment than the one I had left behind. It was a great reminder that even though sometimes things seem hopeless, good things can happen.
That is the story of how I came up with my artist name.
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I want to become better at talking about my art so I am writing short-form stories of how I became an illustrator and stories behind my artworks. Subscribe to follow the journey.
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