A buyer in Patna asked me to make the painting "a little less traditional"
Something happened last week I am still turning over in my mind.
A gentleman from Patna, well off, wanted a Kohbar for his drawing room. Size was fine, budget was fine, he was ready to pay more than my usual. Then he said, the colours are very bright ji, and the fish and all, can you make it a little less traditional? More matching with the sofa.
I said I will think and let him know. My son says take the order, money is money, do a small change, no harm. Maybe he is right. But I have been sitting with this for some days now.
Because what is left if I remove the fish? In our Kohbar the fish is not decoration. It is fertility, it is the whole point of why the bride's family asks for this painting. I cannot make it "less traditional." I can make it smaller. I can make it on better paper. I can explain to him for one hour what he is buying. That much I can do.
I did not send that order away yet. He is waiting. My wife says I am stubborn like my mother, which I take as a compliment, though I am not sure she means it so.
For those of you selling traditional work, I want to ask honestly. When the buyer wants it diluted, what do you do? Do you hold the line, or you adjust and stay alive? I am not asking to be praised for refusing. I genuinely do not know which is the wiser thing.
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I have taken those orders. Twice. Both times I told myself it was one small change, and both times I spent the next month looking at the thing I had made and not recognizing myself in it. Not because the change was so big. Because I was the one who made it.
Your son is not wrong about the money. Money is real and roofs do not repair themselves. But there is a difference between a commission and a translation, and "less traditional, more matching the sofa" is not asking you to translate. It is asking you to redecorate. Those are different jobs and only one of them is yours.
If the fish go, the fish will be gone. The drawing room will look very nice.
The part that got me is "not because the change was so big." I think that's the thing people don't get from the outside. From the outside it's one fish, or one shade, whatever. From the inside you're the one holding the brush and you know exactly what you traded and why, and that's what you see every time you look at it.
I paint landscapes, nothing sacred about a tree, and I still turned down a woman who wanted me to paint over a field I'd done because it clashed with her curtains. She was perfectly nice about it. I just knew I'd hate the painting afterwards and she'd have gotten a worse picture. Money's real though, I'm not going to pretend I've never taken the job.
You have put the finger exactly on the point ji. And your field of grass, nobody would call that sacred, still you knew you would hate it afterwards. That is the whole thing. It is not about the subject being holy or not holy. It is that the hand which made it has to live with it.
The curtains and the sofa, both are the same disease. The painting becomes a thing to be matched, like a cushion cover.
Twice you took such orders and twice you did not recognise yourself. That is a heavy sentence and I am grateful you wrote it, because my son is telling me take the money and I was half agreeing with him. Now I will show him your words.
Your Galway field, the woman was nice, you said. That is what makes it difficult, no? If they were rude we could refuse easily and feel good. When they are nice and paying well, then the refusing is on us only.
You have said the exact thing I was not able to say myself ji. Translation versus redecorating. I will remember this line.
Twice you took such orders and both times you did not recognize yourself in the work. That is the part which troubles me more than the money. If I do it, the painting will hang in his drawing room and nobody will know, but I will know. And my mother, wherever she is, she will also know.
Your Galway work, the relief printing, you have kept the old thing alive in your own place. That is the same work we are doing here, only the soil is different. Thank you for writing, it has helped me.