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"When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door we do not see the one that has been opened for us." - Helen Keller

I wanted to write this one on Thanksgiving, but like always, something turned up & then another, and it got delayed.

Traditionally, Thanksgiving has been a harvest feast - an annual occasion to count our blessings ... and since my harvest is not specific to any season, so I figured, this is as good a time as any.

Like our forefathers, who braved the uncertainties of times by putting in hard work every day, toiling in the sun & not being hesitant to try out different things to meet their challenges, in my small way, I tried to do that, albeit in a much smaller scale. Hence I could not but feel thankful that this year too I have something to look back to & something to write home about.

The year however didn’t start as expected ... In 2019, one of my paintings got fortunately accepted in the Associate Member Show of the National Watercolor Society (NWS) in California ... a 100-year old non-profit working for education & the spread of watercolor. Then in their 100-year show next year ie. 2020 also I got lucky ... though the physical show became online. So this year, I was sad when I couldn’t make it to the show & missed my hat-trick.

I decided to try my hand elsewhere this time & luckily the efforts paid off.

This time the good news came from the East coast. 150 years old & located in the revered Salmagundi Club in New York, the American Watercolor Society is the oldest & perhaps the only other society more famous than the NWS. This year AWS decided to start hosting an Associate Member Show “to provide a venue to display their creative talents”, as put by their respected president, Antonio Masi. The judge was the haloed artist Dean Mitchell, one of the greatest watercolorists the world has seen. And I was truly humbled to find that my painting Notre Dame de Reims, France got selected for this show.

So as one door closes, many others open - only if we are willing to try out new things.

Like as I got tired once again of going through my old collection of subjects for painting – and they’re certainly dwindling what with so many restrictions on travel & gatherings – I finally remembered an idea spoken of by I think artist Robie Laird amongst others. I started painting in series - that way I realized I could capture the nuances of the object or the mood of the place much much better. I felt like revisiting those places once again & knowing them more intimately, besides overcoming the daily hassle of finding something “new” to paint. Thus I ended up working on 5 different series – Pirojshanagar, Ooty, Pawana Lake, Manori & Lauterbrunnen.

Talking about “new” things tried this year,

my article on Aban Tagore published in the Watercolor Artist (Fall issue 2021), will definitely make the cut. I was trying out new ideas to write on when Anne Hevener - the Editor-in-chief of Watercolor Artist - suggested that I write on something which was absolutely new for me. Till then I’ve written about painting techniques or about some “tips-and-tricks” I’ve been able to pick up. This was the 1st time I did real research on art history & wrote about a great artist, his works & times.

It turned out well & I got to know this from one of the readers, who used to be a professor at Penn State University & is a watercolor enthusiast like me. She liked it so much, that she found my contact & wrote back ... we exchanged a few emails & our ideas after that. This was an altogether new experience for me - exchanging ideas with someone who got to know me through my writing.

The year had been different on other fronts as well & there were many “new”s for me.

Like jurying a bunch of industrial design students in a premium institute & then presenting our new design to a panel of juries myself. Delivering lectures on art & design in a few reputed institutes. And to top it all - answering questions on design in a film on the occasion of Industrial Design Day!!

Opening new doors of happiness! And how!!

Not everything has been sweet or successful, but different they have been & each left an impression with me that’d last for some time.

And everywhere, as one door closed, several others opened. But I had to get there.

It’s like when the paint doesn’t come out of the tube because it’s dried, we should open the crimp at the back & scrape out the good paint from inside & fill a pan.

2021 has been a year that opened several windows in the digital world. For the 1st time, my works got published in Artistonish magazine which offers excellent opportunities to artists especially in the digital domain. Likewise, I participated in Biafarin 

- again a first - a completely digital exhibition. And yes, I again became an “ambassador” of American Watercolor Weekly – another successful digital enterprise.

And I could not but feel thankful for having spotted all these opportunities & then having the determination to put in good efforts to make good of them.

So a 'thanks' is due. A thanks for being different.

And I thought of ending this post with a decision to subscribe to a different magazine - that’s not on watercolor! Of the many watercolorists I follow, one is known to have a background in printing & graphic arts, another in industrial design & yet another in medical illustration. So who knows what opportunity & new things await in a magazine which is on oil painting!

Albeit something different.