I often get asked what it’s like ‘living the dream’, working from home and running a creative business. However, I always feel rather awkward and never very well equipped to answer. Firstly, because as hard as I’ve tried, I don’t ever feel like a business woman or even someone running a business.
When I was growing up being a business woman was the exact template my mother gave me. By the time I was 10 she’d written four children’s cookery books: ‘The Nursery Rhyme Cookery Books’ at a time they didn’t even exist , she’d appeared on consumer television programmes as an expert home economist, she was running a hotel, she had an outside catering business and also set up a company making salted butterscotch toffee from an original Victorian recipe. I used to go to the gift fairs with her and I learned how to sell her salty toffee. People would literally turn their noses up at the very idea anyone would want salted butterscotch…she was completely ahead of her time! I have memories of taking a basket of sandwiches round to industrial estates at lunchtime in the days before supermarkets were rammed with take-away food, and office workers would buy their lunch from us. I have memories of setting up crisps in tiered, mesh nets behind a bar whilst a local wrestling match was going on and I have memories of sitting on hay bales at agricultural shows watching her present cookery talks and demonstrations. My Dad also ran his own electrical business so, between them they imbued both me and my brother with the confidence that this was what you did; you set up on your own, you were enterprising, you thought of ideas, you found out how things got done and the people to talk to, you worked hard, you created stuff, you sold it…you ran a business!
I have had moments over the last couple of years when my income rose, mainly due to sponsored posts on Instagram, and when I’ve thought, ‘Yes, I am a business woman; I run a business. I sort out my contracts and I have conference calls. I provide mood boards and get dismissive notes…Yes, I am running my own business.’ However…and there has to be a however, this has just been part of my business, part of my freelancing as an artist who has many strings, it is only part of the whole picture.
My main job has always been acting and in 2007, when I set up my blog, I had been working in the theatre for almost 2 years non-stop whilst single parenting. If I was on tour, I organised my childcare with military precision because this was my business. Inevitably actors always have to earn a living when out of work, it’s part of the vocational deal, but I suppose I was unusual because I had always been able to make and sell things over getting temp work, which is what most of my friends had to do. I was never out of acting work for long, and as soon as a regional theatre job finished on a Saturday night, I’d be driving back to London to sign- on at the Job Centre on Monday morning. Signing-on was always a stop-gap, never a long term thing, as I was regularly auditioning for work .
One year I worked on a film and become good friends with a brilliant wig maker who shared a studio in Brixton with a facial hair maker ( yes, those jobs exist…). She told me that there was a free studio space opposite theirs if I was interested. I was!! I’d been desperate for a studio space as our flat was small and everything I was making for my stall at Spitalfields Market was taking over the living room. A studio in a Victorian cobbled courtyard was perfect and so I moved in and became ‘Bonnie Brazil of Brixton’. This was my first studio but it wasn’t my first ‘brand name’; When I was much younger I’d always fantasised about having a company called ‘London Pride’ ; the logo being the flower of the same name. I’d also designed home-made business cards in 1987 when I was about 14; my business was called ‘Philomel’…a play on my own name and the Shakespearian word for nightingale. Now as Bonnie Brazil of Brixton I made woollen tweed handbags for my stall. I never made loads of money and it was really hard work, but I always thought if I kept doing it, it might just take off one day. However the following year I had my son, we moved to Brighton and everything changed. Acting work got harder to come by as now motherhood meant that I wasn’t prepared to work miles away from home and the cost of childcare always outweighed theatre wages. I still made things but I couldn’t hand sew anymore because I’d developed carpal tunnel syndrome during pregnancy. At one point I created designs that I put onto baby grows which proved quite popular, but I had also started painting sound; portraits of people’s voices using my synaesthesia, and it was these paintings which gave me the confidence to begin to build another career alongside acting. Painting offered the possibility of earning an alternative income doing what I loved. There was no real strategy but I do remember something my Mum had heard Gilbert and George say; that it was ‘all about PR’. I never felt massively confident as a painter, but everyone kept telling me that what I was doing was unique and that I should do more of it. So I did and synaesthesia became my thing…
I fell into social media quietly in February 2011…everyone was on Facebook and Twitter which I had actively disliked and shunned. I had a blog, which about 10 people looked at, because it was somewhere I could park the masses of photos I was taking with my camera phone…I wanted to chart my visual inspiration; things I’d seen, things I’d done, places I’d been to and pieces I was creating. My blog was my anchor and I really, really didn’t want to be on Twitter or Facebook. Through my blog I discovered Flickr; a platform for photo sharing, which was the thing I’d been craving, and then…then I found Instagram. Four months after the app had launched I found my digital home through the blogs of Sandra Juto and My Funny Eye. It was completely removed from all the Tweeters; it was purely visual and you chatted about your photos, your outlook, and your ‘eye’. It was about visceral beauty rather selfies or being witty and it was AMAZING! I tried to get people excited about it but they just weren’t interested. By the time I had 200K followers on Instagram, I still received a wall of blank looks from most people. 200K followers on an app that wasn’t Twitter or Facebook; who cared?!….And then something changed; an invisible door opened and so when everyone else arrived on Instagram I was on the ‘Suggested Users’ list. For once I was in the right place at the right time…but it had taken over 10 years of effort and hard work to be accidentally in the right place at the right time. I was told by people ‘in the know’ that I just had to be patient as the UK was way behind the US in understanding Instagram’s advertising potential, but that soon I would most likely be earning a good living working with brands. I had no idea what that meant but I thought I should talk to some ad agencies. However, when I did they a) couldn’t understand why I had so many followers and b) couldn’t work out what I could do for brands. They told me I’d need at least 1M followers like Zoella to get proper work. So I waited, I carried on creating, painting, doing my own thing, and then it happened! I started to get asked to create product placement type images on my table and at that point because no-one really knew what was the ‘right’ way to do things, I was allowed to lead the creative impetus. And I got paid.
But I still didn’t feel like I was running a creative business…I’ve always felt I’m a freelancer and I feel much happier acknowledging and accepting that. I enjoy doing so many different things to create my income; acting, painting, workshops, one to ones, photography, textiles, and of course my ‘Conscious Creativity’ book ( although don’t ever write a book if you think you’re going to make your fortune! ), that somehow ‘running a business’ feels a bit limiting. I want to create things, I don’t want to strategise. I’ve tried and I can’t. So my advice is to basically do what you enjoy doing and if that leads to setting up a business, targeting audiences etc, maybe even getting a bank loan, make sure you actually enjoy doing that bit too. But you shouldn’t feel any pressure to set up a business doing what you love just because it seems like that’s what’s expected of you. I believe it’s completely fine for ‘doing what you love’ to remain just that: To lead you down unexpected creative paths which enrich your life rather than your bank balance. My family definitely showed me how to be entrepreneurial, but I also saw the many disappointments which come with that. If you run your own business you have to learn to ride those waves of excitement and utter disappointment, and those waves can often be very rough and very heartless which means you must always feel compelled to do what you love rather than because it seems like a good idea. If both can come together, for a while at least, you may well be able to live the dream. My 25 years of freelancing has given me moments of ‘living the dream’ but also moments of complete despair; it’s the creative vocational deal I’ve had to accept…and most days I’m very happy with that!
The images below are a real scrap book of dream moments, paintings, parents, process and a whole load of journey…
Below: My mum behind the Duchess of Kent after a presentation at a ‘Food From Britain’ event and below that my parents at their 50th…
Below: Me wearing the wig my friend made who found me my studio…
Below: Early Instagram table composition…
Below: First very brightly coloured petal flat lay…
