Do you email a gallery first, or just walk in with your work?
Namaste to all ji. I want to ask one thing which I keep thinking about.
Myself Ramesh, Mithila painting from Madhubani, Bihar. My son made this account for me. Always I have sold through the cooperative here, and through people who come to our village for the work. Gallery matter is new for me.
Some months back I carried three paintings rolled in cloth, took the bus to Patna, and simply walked into a gallery there and asked to show. The man was polite, he looked at everything, and then said email is better, send photos. Only. So I came home with the same three paintings in the same cloth.
Now I am confused which way is correct. To walk in and let them see the actual work with their own eyes, or to send photo by email first like a formality. In our tradition the painting is to be seen with hands and eyes, not in a small phone picture. But maybe that thinking is old.
So tell me honestly, how do you all do it. Email first, or just go and stand there. And which one has actually worked for you. Tell me I am wrong if walking in is a foolish thing now.
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Ramesh, the bus to Patna and home again with the same three paintings in the same cloth, that part stays with me. I work with cyanotype here in Porto, so I am not the person to tell you how a gallery in India should be approached. But I have made that walk in with work under my arm, and I have sent the emails too, and I think both are honest ways of being a person who made something.
What the man said is probably true as advice, that email lets them see everything without the awkwardness of the room. But it is not really about the photos being better than your presence. It is that a gallery wants to decide quietly, on their own time, and a person standing in front of them asking for an answer that day is hard for them to hold.
So maybe it was not a no. Just a different door. I would write to a few, short and plain, one painting per photo, and let the work speak the way it does. You already know your own paintings better than anyone in that gallery does. That does not change with the format.
The unrolling, that is the part people who email never have to think about. Three paintings in a cloth on a bus, and then the whole thing has to come out of you in a strange room, on a strange floor, with someone standing there deciding. It is a hard thing to do well and it puts the work at a disadvantage it did not earn.
But the email has its own dishonesty. A jpeg of a Mithila painting flattens the very thing that is the painting, the line, the density of the ground. I have stood in front of work that looked like nothing on my screen and was enormous in the room. So the man in Patna is not wrong, and also he is only telling you the half that is convenient for him.
If you go again, go with the photos already sent and a name to ask for. Naja. It is a small advantage but it is real.
You are right ji, the jpeg flattens it. But then what is the way? If I send only photo, they see nothing of the work. If I carry it, they say send photo. This is the circle I am going around in.
One thing I will say, in our painting the ground itself is speaking. The paper is handmade here, the rice paste, the line on it. On a screen it becomes flat colour only, like a print. My mother would not have understood this problem at all. She never had to send anything anywhere, people came to the house.
But maybe the answer is not either one. Some gallery people here told me to send the photo but also to say clearly in the letter, this work is on handmade paper, size is such, colours are natural stone and flower. So the person knows what he is not seeing. That much I can do, writing I can manage slowly.
You said you stood in front of work that looked like nothing on screen and was enormous in the room. So you know. Which means some of these people also know, and still they ask for jpeg only. That part I am not able to understand.
You have said it in a way I could not say myself, ji. The unrolling is the whole thing. On the bus I was holding that cloth on my lap like a child, and in that room I had to open it on their floor with my own hands, and then fold it back the same way. That is not the same as a photo at all.
Cyanotype I have not seen, only in pictures. Porto is far. But you know the walk in, so we understand each other.
One thing I will ask, since you have sent the emails also. When you send the photos, do you write about the work, the story and meaning behind each one, or only the size and the price? Because with our painting, the fish, the peacock, the kohbar, all of it is meaning, not only design. I am thinking if I send only photos with no words, half the work is lost. Kindly tell what you do.