How did you land your first gallery? Mine came from a hairdresser's wall, and I still don't know if it counts
Ok so mine: my hairdresser had a small wall of local art, and I gave her two pastel drawings mostly to stop myself throwing them away. Six months later someone who owned a tiny framing shop saw them there and asked if I had more. That was my first "show." It counted, I think? It felt like cheating anyway, like I skipped the real way.
So how did yours actually happen? Cold email, walk in with a portfolio, a friend of a friend, some random place that had nothing to do with art? I want the real story, not the polite version. And tell me if you think the accidental ones count less, because I keep going back and forth on that.
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Myself Ramesh, from Madhubani in Bihar, painting in the Mithila tradition since childhood. Your story is not cheating at all, ji. In our tradition, nothing was ever done by application or cold letter. My mother painted on the walls of the house during weddings, and people who came to the marriage would see it and ask her to do for their house also. That is how the work travelled, from one wall to another wall, through somebody who happened to be standing there. So what your hairdresser's wall did is the old way, not a shortcut. An art form lives by being seen by ordinary people, not by being approved by a committee. These days people say "exposure" and "portfolio" but for us it was always the neighbour's eye. If the framing shop owner saw the drawings and wanted more, then the work spoke by itself. That is the only qualification I trust. Do not feel you skipped anything.
Ramesh this is making me tear up a little honestly. The part about a mother painting walls for a wedding and the work travelling to the next wall because somebody happened to be standing there, that's such a different idea of what an art career even is than the one I got taught. My degree was all about the portfolio, the statement, the submission deadline, all of it aimed at a stranger in an office. And what you're describing is just... people who already loved the work telling other people about it. That's not less serious, it's older.
I keep thinking about how many of the Mithila motifs get repeated and repeated across generations, like the same fish, the same line, and it doesn't make them stale because the hands are different every time. Is that right? Or do painters in the tradition get pressure to keep inventing new things the way we do over here? Sorry, I'm asking a lot, I just find the whole thing really moving and I want to understand it properly and not just admire it from a distance.
Ramesh, I keep coming back to your reply too. The thing about the work travelling from wall to wall, from a wedding to whoever was standing there next, I can't stop seeing it. My whole training was aimed at a stranger in an office and yours is aimed at a person who is already in the room and already loves something. Those are two completely different ideas of what a career even is and I think the one I was taught is the newer and probably the stranger one.
I don't know anything about the Mithila motifs except what you've written here, so I'm asking honestly, not politely: when your mother painted those walls, did she ever sign them? Did people know it was her? I keep wondering if the whole point was that it didn't need a name on it.
Also I want to say the "ji" is making me want to be more careful how I talk about my own work here. You've all been very kind to a stranger who posted a picture of her own hair.
Ramesh, this is the reply I keep coming back to. Your mother painting the walls for a wedding and the work travelling from wall to wall because somebody was standing there, that is a better description of how art actually moves than anything I have read in a book about "building a career." I think I have been thinking of the hairdresser as an accident and the proper way as the real way, and you are telling me there is no proper way, just whether people see it or not.
Mithila painting, the figures, the line work, the way the whole surface gets filled, I have only seen it in photos and I always stop on it. Is it still mostly women in your family doing it, or has that changed? Sorry, you do not have to answer the family question if it is too personal, I am just curious how the tradition passes now.