Jeremy Sicile-Kira

My name is Jeremy Sicile-Kira. I am an artist with autism and synesthesia. Synesthesia means that greatly my senses are mixed. Frankly I see emotions as color. Hearing people’s voices or musicians playing instruments elicits colors as well. Frankly I have challenges with my autism, but I feel that my special ability of synesthesia is directly related to my sensitivities as an autistic person.

About 6 years ago I began to communicate (via typing) to my mom and support staff the dreams I was having every night: dreams that I was painting colorful abstract portraits of people I had met during the day. Then one night I dreamt I had a great art show of my paintings. Truly I was really excited and asked my mom how I could truly make my dream come true and have an art show. Mom frankly told me it could not very much happen unless I painted in real life. Truly I was surprised to see I could, by kindly trying hard, to learn to paint. My dream came true: In 2016, I had my first curated, solo art show in 2016. It was very successful.

After the art show, I needed more clients and needed help with marketing. San Diego has many good juried art fairs, and frankly I wanted to be able to have a booth at an outdoor popular juried art festival in San Diego to sell some art I already had painted, and hopefully to meet new clients. Frankly once I was accepted in the fair based on the quality of my work, truly I needed funding to pay for the booth, the truck, staff to help the visitors to the booth, and to create some marketing materials.

Frankly it was a great way to network for new clients. Really also I learned a better idea of what people want to buy. Truly smaller original paintings sold better than prints, and I realized that it is better for me to nicely paint even smaller paintings, even if I prefer to paint bigger paintings. Nicely I now paint small ones as well as big.

Frankly I learned how important marketing is. Nicely I continue to do shows twice a year, and people who visit the booths may not buy the first time, but often buy the second time. Sometimes they contact me for a private commission.

Greatly, I am truly happy and grateful for the grant I received to enable me to do the first art show. Without the grant, I would not have been able to afford the booth and all that was necessary to make it happen. Truly meeting people I did not know allowed me to frankly understand what people thought of my art, and what people wanted to buy. Greatly it allowed me to start collecting emails to continue an email relationship to remind people of my art and my story, and I learned this is important for continuing to have customers.

For more information, visit jeremysvision.com
Instagram: @jeremysvision
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JeremysVision/
Email: Sicilekira@gmail.com