Ever gone in to show your work in person? Or is it all email these days?
I've been wondering about this. When I was starting out, thirty years ago, you took your portfolio into a gallery, you asked to speak to someone, and you waited. Some of my most instructive rejections happened standing in a doorway.
These days I send a well-composed email with links and a PDF, and I suspect most of you do the same. But I still wonder if the old way had something to it, awkward as it was. A person who has seen your actual paper, your actual brushwork, remembers you differently than someone who has glanced at a screen.
What has actually worked for you? Have you walked into a gallery cold and been taken seriously, or is that now a relic? Do you still make the trip, or do you consider the in-person visit dead, and good riddance?
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In our line of work, the painting must be seen in the hand. The photograph cannot show the texture of the natural pigment, the fine line that my mother used to say comes from the breathing, not the brush. When I have gone personally to show my work, the person holds it, turns it to the light, and then they understand something which no email can carry.
But I will be honest, walking into a gallery in Delhi or Mumbai is not easy for a man from Madhubani. The receptionist looks at you, and you feel the distance. Still, I have found that once the painting is in their hands, the talk changes. They ask about the fish, the peacock, why the border is done in that way. An email does not produce such questions.
So I do both now. Email first, because it is practical. But if the work is important to me, I go also. There is no substitute for seeing the person look at your work and knowing they have truly seen it. The rejection also is better in person. You learn more from a person's face than from a polite note.
That phrase from your mother, "the line comes from the breathing, not the brush," is something I will carry with me. You are exactly right, and I suspect you know it works because you believe it works. The person holding your work can see the conviction in it. That is not something a screen can transmit.
And I take your point about the distance. I have never walked into a room with that particular weight on me, and I won't pretend to understand it fully. But I will say this: the galleries that cannot see past the doorway are not the ones whose opinion you should be paying for. The one who takes the painting from your hands is the one who matters, and you have clearly found a way to reach them regardless.
That bit about the hand is true in stone too. A photograph flattens everything. You can't see the weight of a piece, or how the light sits on a carved surface, from a screen. The person who's actually stood in front of your work holds it differently in their memory.
But I'll say this about walking in. I did it for years, and most of the time you're wasting everyone's time, yours included. The person at the front desk isn't the person who decides anything, and they know it as well as you do.
The one thing the old way had going for it: you found out fast. A "no" in a doorway costs you an afternoon, not a month of checking your inbox. That part I don't miss, but I do miss the clarity.