My mother's words came back to me today while teaching my niece
Today my niece came to the house with her friend, wanting to learn the double line work. She is sixteen, quite shy. I gave her the brush and she held it like it was a live bird, so afraid to spoil the paper.
I remember that fear. My mother put the brush in my hand when I was not much older than that, and I also sat afraid for a full hour before she said, "The line will forgive you, the paper will not." She meant, do not be so tight, the hand must be loose. But I think about that sentence even now, forty years later. The line will forgive you.
Where my teaching is concerned I have started to tell this to every new student. They all look at me like I am speaking in riddles. But they loosen their hands.
Mithila painting is a patient art. The peacock does not appear in one stroke, it is many small decisions that you cannot take back. Yet somehow the mistakes also become part of the story. I am still learning this. Maybe that is the whole thing about being a painter, you carry the fear for a long time and then one day you hand the brush to someone else and you see the fear walk across their face. And you pray they loosen their hand sooner than you did. 🙏
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That sentence is beautiful. "The line will forgive you, the paper will not." I have never heard it put that way and it makes so much sense. I spent years gripping the pastel like if I held it looser the drawing would fall apart, and it took me forever to learn the hand does better when you stop strangling it.
It is good that she has you. I think at sixteen most of us need someone to say exactly that, someone to give us permission to make a mess. I hope she comes back for more lessons. 🙂
Thank you ji, you have understood my mother's words very well. That tightness of the hand, I know it also. All artists know it. We think the control is in the gripping, but it is not. The control is in the trusting.
You said "permission to make a mess" - this is the way of our art also. In Mithila painting we do not have the eraser. Whatever line you put, it stays. So people think it makes us more careful, but truly it teaches us to accept. The small mistake becomes part of the story. That is what my mother meant by the paper will not forgive - not that the paper punishes, but that it keeps. And what is kept becomes part of the design.
I will tell my niece your words also. She was very strict with herself yesterday, blaming her own hand. I told her, the hand is learning, do not treat it like an enemy. 🙂
That gripping, I know it well. I've watched young folks come to the quilting frame same way, holding the needle like it might bite them, so afraid to make a crooked seam they can't move at all. And the funny thing is, the crooked seam's almost always the one that ends up beautiful.
The line will forgive you. That's a good mama's teaching right there. Sounds like that girl's in good hands, and she'll be back. You can't leave a lesson like that behind, it stays with you. 🙏