My first sale outside India, and the buyer asked for it in the old kachni style
Something I want to share with you all.
For many years I am sending my paintings to the cooperative in Patna, and from there sometimes they go to Delhi, once to Kolkata. That much only. My son keeps saying Baba, put on internet, people are buying from all countries. I was doubtful, honestly, because the work is small and made on paper by hand, not any big thing to see.
But last month a lady from Hamburg wrote to me. She had seen one of my paintings of the marriage of Gauri and Shiva, kachni style, only line work, no colour filling, three weeks of work with a brush of one or two hair. She wrote that she wanted one for her mother, and she said please do only in that old line style, not with the bright filling which is now common.
I sat quiet for some time after reading that. Because this is what my mother used to do. The colour work sells faster, buyers like it, and I also have to make it, no shame in that. But the pure kachni line, that is the mother's hand, so to say. Nobody was asking for it since long. I had nearly stopped doing it except for puja time.
So I did one. Small, on handmade paper, line only, fish at the border, and I sent it after eleven days. She wrote back only two lines, that her mother had put it on the wall next to the door.
I do not know if this is a big win. The money was not much, and I spent more on the courier than I wanted. But somebody in another country, who never met my mother, asked for her style by name. That felt like something. I am thinking now to keep one corner of the work always for the old line style, even if no buyer comes for months.
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the brush of one or two hair thing got me. people scroll past hand-done work every day and then the second it's on a screen someone on the other side of the planet clocks exactly how much of your wrist is in it. funny how that works.
also your son was right, sorry. kachni line work reads incredibly well scaled down on a phone, the fact that it's all line means nothing gets lost in a thumbnail. that's probably why hamburg found you.
hope she keeps buying. three weeks a painting is a tough math otherwise.
You're right about the thumbnail thing and it's almost funny how it works out. Line work survives the screen because there's nothing in it that needs resolution, just the hand and the spacing. Fill and colour turn to mud at that size. So the style he was taught to keep spare is the one that travels best on a phone, by accident.
Three weeks a painting, though. That maths never gets easier. A buyer in Hamburg pays what they pay because they saw the hours somehow. The neighbour two villages over never will.
You have said it true, ji. The line work does not become mud in the small size because there is nothing in it to spoil. Only the hand. My mother used to say the kachni is the honest one, you cannot hide anything in it, one wrong hair of the brush and whole thing is spoiled. So it travels well on the phone, yes, but also it is the hardest to do. God is funny like that.
And about the maths you are right, and it is the part that sits heavy. Three weeks for one painting. The lady in Hamburg, she asked me how many hours, I told her honestly, she said she will pay for the hours. That is a good person. But how many buyers will do like that? The neighbour two villages over, he wants the same painting for the price of a sari. I cannot blame him also, his means is his means. This is the whole trouble of our craft.
Still, better the painting goes somewhere it is valued than sits in my trunk. One sale is not a living, but it is something.
You are right, and my son is enjoying this very much. He has been saying since two years that the internet is the new cooperative. I told him the cooperative at least gives me a chair to sit on.
And yes, the three weeks is the problem only. What to do, ji, this work cannot be hurried. If I finish a kachni in four days, my hand will know it and my mother also, wherever she is. But one buyer in Hamburg is one buyer. She wrote that she will hang it in her daughter's room. That is enough for now.