University Lecturer Launches Art Illustration Business, Amid Pandemic

University lecturer, Christian Azolan has become a full-time artist during the COVID pandemic, and his art business has boomed significantly, with over 350 artworks sold across the world. 

In January 2020, Christian Azolan was a lecturer at a University in London, but he was made redundant when the COVID pandemic struck. Amazingly, he turned this downfall into a positive, and he became a full-time artist, starting his own digital art/illustration business during the middle of the first lockdown in early 2020.

Christian worked like a titan and built his own website. He did all of his own marketing and content, wearing different hats on different days and completing a wide range of tasks, ranging from finance, to fulfilment, to social media, to creating the actual art series, themselves.

Now, Christian has just released his new series called ‘The Birds,’ inspired by lockdown and the feeling of freedom, fantasy and flight, as houses have become cages and everyone just wants to be free – as free as a bird.

So far, Christian has sold limited edition fine art prints and over 350+ artworks mostly from collectors online, and he has been able to sell to people in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, South Africa, and even Australia.

Christian relies on his fine art printers in East London who have worked throughout the entire time of the lockdown, as he sought to work with a British company.

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Christian explained: ‘When the first lockdown started I found for the first time in years, that I had a lot of spare time on my hands. I’ve always been the type of person to keep busy, be productive, and take a chance, and so I decided to launch my own business, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. COVID pushed me to do it.

Christian hopes for an upgrade in the future as well: ‘In the future, I would love to have a small shop and maybe even sell other artists’ work and become a fine art and digital print specialist. I first need to wait and see how the Pandemic will turn out in 2021.’

Christian was a finalist in the Explores Against Extinction Wildlife Artists of the Year, with the exhibition due to be at the OXO Tower in London in Nov 11-22nd 2020. During the lockdown, Christian even secured a deal with Saatchi Art, the largest art shop in the world, and he signed a distribution deal with Wayfair in the UK and in Germany.

He also stocked on FY! the biggest print app retailer in the world and has just gone live on Amazon Handmade in the UK, and will soon be in Amazon Germany, Spain, Sweden, France, Sweden, Italy, US and Japan.

Christian’s beautiful art is available on https://christianazolan.co.uk with different series he has created already such as: The Birds Series, Heart Series, Light Fantastica and a Mixed Collection.