FER CAGGIANO

(And Why I’m Grateful Anyway)

For over 25 years, I played the game.

I worked in the traditional art world — not the glamorous, gallery-opening, champagne-sipping version that movies sell you, but the real, gritty one. The one where rent is due, materials are expensive, and you quickly learn that if you want to survive, you need to sell. And to sell, you need to create what people want to buy.

So I adapted. Landscapes, tourist-friendly scenes, “home décor” art. Not soulless, but certainly not always honest to what my heart wanted to say. Still, I was building something — a client base, a business, a reputation. I learned to market, to compromise, to hustle.

Only once did I allow myself to step completely outside the mold. My project Like a Girl, Dare to Dream was my soul poured onto canvas. It was about representation, empowerment, impact. It took two years of my life. It received media attention and community praise. It made waves — and broke my bank account. I couldn’t find the sponsors. I couldn’t make the finances work. And just like that, I learned a brutal truth: impact doesn’t always pay.

Then came NFTs.

In 2021, I stumbled into a completely different universe. It was wild, chaotic, and full of promise. Here were collectors who didn’t care if your art matched their couch. They wanted truth. They wanted rebellion. They wanted weird, raw, untamed art. Suddenly, I could paint from my heart. I could experiment. I could be.

And for a moment, it worked. I sold a lot. I reinvested every ETH I made into buying art from other underrepresented, emerging, or just plain brilliant artists. I was married then, my shop was running well, and I felt… liberated. I built a digital art collection that has no liquidity, no resale value — but it still brings me joy every time I look at it.

But then the market crashed.
And so did my life.

My marriage unraveled. It got ugly. The kind of ugly you don’t post on social media. I lost my business, my financial safety net, and my ex threatened to take custody of my son. South Carolina law gave him a real shot at that. So I left. I ran. I grabbed my son, our two cats, and sought shelter with friends.

A friend tried to help by selling my entire inventory of oil paintings. Not at a discount. At a loss — below the price of materials. Most of the pieces were sold to be painted over by another artist. That broke something in me. After decades of building, suddenly everything I had created was reduced to blank canvases again.

I stopped painting.
I took admin gigs.
I focused on survival.

But every once in a while, an opportunity would come up in the NFT space. Someone would invite me to a drop, a collab, a show. Digital art didn’t require canvases, brushes, or a budget I no longer had. I could create without worrying about cost. And more importantly, I could create without worrying about sales.

Today, I still mint my digital pieces as NFTs. I laugh about the lack of sales (because if you don’t laugh, you cry, right?). But the art I make now is mine. Unfiltered. Unpolished. Uncommercial.

Did NFTs ruin my art career?

In many ways, yes.
They exposed just how fragile it really was.
They pulled the rug out from under my “business” and stripped away everything I thought was stable.

But they also gave me something I never truly had before: freedom.

Now, I create from the heart. And I hope, one day, I’ll have the means and the motivation to return to physical painting again. But until then, I’ll keep creating in pixels and minting my truth — even if nobody buys it.

Because this version of my art career may not be profitable.
But it’s finally, undeniably, mine.

And yes, I still keep my online store alive. It barely pays for itself, but I keep it open out of love for the clients who have stood by me all these years. They remind me that even in the hardest chapters, my art has never stopped finding its way into people’s lives.