RAW Artists Exhibition

On Saturday, 29th August I was lucky enough to be part of RAW Artists, an event which is for emerging artists to be able to showcase their work to the public in a fun and energetic setting.
This was my first ever exhibition so as you can imagine I was extremely nervous mainly by the face to face interaction with people who were viewing my work, it's an extremely different feel than sitting at a computer screen and reading comments about your work.
Nerves aside it was a great experience, being able to have such a better connection with people who are interested in your work and you to be able to explain in more of a personal manner why you created each image and your processes from concept building to post processing and seeing their interest was definitely the most enjoyable part of the night.

There was also another reason why I was so nervous for the night, stage fright. In an event meeting a couple of months before the night all the artists were told that the host of the event will be speaking to each of us on stage (in front of about 800 people) about ourselves and our work. This was a choice and if we didn't choose so we weren't obligated to speak. I had thought long and hard about whether or not I wanted to, coming to the conclusion that no matter how terrified I was of somehow embarrassing myself, stuttering my words or any other reason it was something I actually wanted to be thrown into without too much thought. I had already made an extremely large jump by participating in an exhibition for the first time, I had to go all out and make the most of it and not stop half way because of some fears.

It was such a pleasure being able to meet the other artists properly who I was showcasing with, everyone was so talented and lovely!
I was overwhelmed by the amount of people who came along to support me, people who I hadn't even met it was great to finally meet everyone.
I can not thank every single person for being there enough and for making it such a brilliant and crazy fun night :)
 

You can check out RAW Artists website here and also their Facebook!

Photos by Janaka