Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

It was the 19th-cen­tu­ry French painter Paul Gau­guin who once said of art, “It is a ques­tion of how to be rich in spir­it rather than rich in ma­te­r­i­al.” Those are words al­most every artist lives by.

Sea­soned artists will tell you that one does not sim­ply set about work­ing on a mas­ter­piece for the pur­pose of mak­ing mil­lions. In fact, one does not set about work­ing on a mas­ter­piece at all. Paint­ing, in and of it­self, is an act of self-dis­cov­ery—a long and wind­ing jour­ney be­tween an artist and their can­vas. Their brush is the trans­port.

Nali­ni Roshell Singh has been on that jour­ney since she was 14. What start­ed as a hob­by has turned in­to her liveli­hood. She al­ways want­ed it that way. Singh has emerged as one of the pre­mier sip and paint artists in the coun­try.

On a good day, she can con­duct three such ses­sions across T&T. The sip and paint in­dus­try is a set of busi­ness­es that hire pro­fes­sion­al artists to pro­vide step-by-step in­struc­tions to re­pro­duce a pre-se­lect­ed work of art while they drink wine or oth­er bev­er­ages.

When class at­ten­dees fin­ish, they get to keep their cre­ations. Sip and paint has evolved and now al­so in­cludes chil­dren drink­ing soft drinks and eat­ing snacks. Over the years, Singh has worked with al­most every age group.

From a hob­by to hard work

“When you have a hob­by, you give your time, en­er­gy, and re­sources in­to your hob­by, so I thought I would just con­tin­ue with this and maybe one day I’ll be good enough for peo­ple to pay for my work,” Singh re­calls a thought she once had.

To re­alise the dream, she would work three jobs while at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty and, in oth­er in­stances, five jobs. She worked a side hus­tle of giv­ing Math­e­mat­ics and Ad­di­tion­al Maths lessons to both pri­ma­ry school and sec­ondary school stu­dents.

Her main job was a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive at a gym. She lever­aged the op­por­tu­ni­ty to net­work with clients there and man­aged to sell some of her art pieces to peo­ple who ex­er­cised. Singh would go on to grad­u­ate with a de­gree in Math­e­mat­ics.

Hav­ing paid for her de­gree by work­ing mul­ti­ple jobs while al­so in­vest­ing in equip­ment to keep build­ing her pas­sion for paint­ing, by 2018, the acrylic painter could fo­cus sole­ly on what she loved.

Sip and Paint takes T&T by storm

Carv­ing a ca­reer as a painter would bring its own chal­lenges. Not on­ly is sell­ing art pieces dif­fi­cult, but the tools Singh need­ed to con­tin­ue her work were ex­pen­sive. She stuck at it. When­ev­er she sold an art piece or two, she would in­vest again in brush­es and paint. She was mov­ing slow­ly, but she was mov­ing.

Singh was de­ter­mined to forge ahead with her goals as op­posed to go­ing back to work­ing mul­ti­ple jobs. “To be hon­est, I’d rather work 100 hours a week for my­self than 40 hours for some­body else,” she told the WE mag­a­zine.

In Christ­mas 2020, own­er of Mode Alive, Gary Aboud, would give Singh a break, al­low­ing her to set up a stall near the en­trance and sell her art pieces out­side one of his stores with­out charge.

It was a huge op­por­tu­ni­ty, with hun­dreds of cus­tomers bustling in and out of his store. On De­cem­ber 23, she sold $500 worth of art. That night she went to the gro­cery store, bought items, and cre­at­ed five ham­pers to give to the less for­tu­nate. “I re­mem­ber what it was like to be in need,” she said.

The next day, Christ­mas Eve, she sold $2,000 worth of her art. “It was kind of in­stant kar­ma,” the 38-year-old re­calls. Over the last six years, Singh has gone on to stake a claim with­in the lo­cal art fra­ter­ni­ty.

She said, “Be­tween 2016 and 2022, I would have done 15 events. In 2023 and so far in 2024, we went from 15 events in six years to host­ing over 4,000 peo­ple over the last two years.”

Some of those peo­ple she would touch in­clud­ed Sip and Paint events at sev­er­al chil­dren’s homes in­tro­duc­ing art to a vul­ner­a­ble group that doesn’t have ac­cess to such an ini­tia­tive.

She al­so en­sures thor­ough prepa­ra­tions are done to keep the price of her events as af­ford­able as pos­si­ble so those in a low­er in­come brack­et can al­so dis­cov­er paint­ing. She cred­its her friend Shiv­am Teelucks­ingh, who has sup­port­ed her on the jour­ney.

Singh has been able to tie her ex­pe­ri­ence in busi­ness with her cre­ative tal­ent, and it has opened up a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties for her. She’s vir­tu­al­ly a one-woman show, re­stock­ing her­self and tak­ing care of the lo­gis­tics with the many events she works at.

“Thank­ful­ly, I have both. I love busi­ness. I love lis­ten­ing to pod­casts and read­ing books. Late­ly, I’ve done a course in hy­dro­pon­ics. So, free­dom to do paint­ing comes with a price tag,” Singh ex­plained.

From T&T to the world For Singh, her dream has al­ways been to let the world see her work. It is a com­mon dream for artists to want their work seen by eyes around the globe. Much like the chal­lenges she faced when she worked mul­ti­ple jobs pur­su­ing a math de­gree and fur­ther chal­lenges when she set out on a path to be a pro­fes­sion­al painter, Singh faces greater chal­lenges to have her work dis­played in in­ter­na­tion­al art gal­leries.

In 2022, she wrote to over 100 art gal­leries across Cana­da. On­ly five have so far re­spond­ed to her, with one in British Co­lum­bia invit­ing her to their art gallery “should she be in the area.”

Singh ad­mits, “I’m not naive to think that as soon as I touch for­eign soil, I’m go­ing to catch a break. How­ev­er, I do want to touch art around the world; I want to make a greater con­tri­bu­tion and con­tin­ue work­ing on my craft and pro­duc­ing orig­i­nal work.”

Part of her many trav­els in in­tro­duc­ing paint­ing to every­day peo­ple who would not oth­er­wise do it is in­spir­ing them to ex­plore a part of their lives that is un­touched.

“It’s like food. You wouldn’t know if you would like the taste of some­thing un­less you tried it,” she adds.

Singh goes fur­ther in ex­plain­ing, “In every­body’s own right, they are artists. They will for­ev­er be artists. They will die an artist. Art is not just a paint­brush and a can­vas.”

As Singh aims for her next big goal, which is the world, she does so know­ing art is a jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery with no des­ti­na­tion. With no end.