Art and the 9-to-5 Life

 From the Desk of Vitasta Raina

Notes: In-between

I spent the month of April renovating my kitchen. I do not have a mansion. My house is tiny even by Mumbai standards. It took this long because I could only supervise the work on the weekends. What should have taken a week took me a whole month, because I have a day job. Don’t get me wrong, I love my work as a product development specialist. Corporate architecture pays my bills, and it grants me several avenues for creative problem-solving. Being able to apply theories I once studied to real, living projects is a special kind of satisfaction that is hard to replicate. But what of my writing and my painting? Things that emanate from my soul. At the end of the working day, I am left shuffling time-slots. 8 pm to 10 pm- finish a short story or Saturday dedicate to finishing a long pending canvas. It is not an ideal life when one considers oneself ‘an artist’ or a ‘writer’, but it is the life I chose. 

I think I realized some 20 years ago when my first few poems got published that I would not be able to survive on money I made by writing, and despite an odd attempt here and there, I have never sold a painting. The hustle it required to breakout in the art world, something I witnessed during my brief stint in Delhi when I was in and out of the Sahitya Akademi, is not something I am capable of. This is also the reason why I could never start my own architectural practice. I do not have the capacity to be a sales woman, spokesperson and much less a businesswoman hob-knobbing to get sustained work. And I neither have a rich parent nor a patron who would support my extracurricular activities while still allowing me to lead a somewhat comfortable suburban life, and I also do not have the strength to live the precarious life of a starving artist. 

So here I am, working a 9-to-5 to support my own artistic inclinations. All around me, I see friends who have been able to break away from this life spliced into time slots. Some have moved out of the city to beach towns, some to mountainous rural terrains. A life I could lead, perhaps, if I was brave enough and ambitious enough, and if I had organized my works and wares better, kept on keeping on. But here I am instead, organizing a retirement plan, looking at completing side-quests and wondering if I could approach a library to host my books. Life, dreams, age old dilemmas, an irrational fear of living a life of quiet ignominy. Amateur hours. But I guess in the end, it is not all that miserable. Painting brings me joy, sharing my art on my Instagram account makes me happy, working on little blog articles, writing my short stories that no one ever reads, and spending sleepless nights working on completing novellas that I might just self-publish on Kindle because submitting manuscripts to publishers just seems like an arduous chore. So yes, I guess I am an amateur. And I guess I am happy with the little things, and yes, I suppose a little lazy too.  

You know there is this philosophy of a ‘Sunday Painter’, the ‘peintre du dimanche’. Someone who doesn’t have professional training and paints only for pleasure on their days off, unlike a professional artist whose work gets displayed and sold in galleries. In many ways, the Sunday painter or writer has more freedom to explore their art, because they are confined to following market demands. Think of a Henry Darger or Rousseau, whose work defined the genre of Art Brut. When you have creative autonomy, freedom from the constraints of grammar, rules of colour theory, and you know your next meal is not dependent on the work you produce, it allows for a freer, bolder expression. At the end of your life, you will have a body of work you are proud of, even if the rest of the world never chanced upon it, a personal expression that makes perfect sense to those who knew you as close friends and family. A legacy. 

In 2026, the concept of ‘Sunday Painter’ has been replaced with ‘Digital Creator’ and ‘Influencer’, and artists now have the opportunity to thrive and even make a comfortable living out of their passions, but it still comes with challenges, often of a different kind- how many views am I getting, are my posts reaching the right audience, how do I work with the algorithm and before you even realize it, you are bound again to the hustle, only the art gallery and art curator and art collector now has a digital avatar. When I was working in Delhi, I would visit the art galleries in India Habitat Centre (IHC) during my lunch break quiet often. On one such day, I met an art curator setting up a viewing for a famous artist. In conversations with her I asked her how one might go about getting their art displayed, and she told me it would require the artist to have had at least 5 solo shows before they would even consider giving them an opportunity to showcase their work at IHC. 

So now, I am curating my house. Setting up painting after painting to display on the walls of my living room, my bedroom, and even the bathrooms. It’s silly, but it’s my own private art gallery, my workshop, and my sanctuary. And I think I am doing okay. 

Vitasta's Workshop. May 2026

*Sundays are for painting, Friday nights for writing weird fiction*

 **Bombay Love**

❤