My son put my paintings on WhatsApp. Now I am getting orders from people who never saw my work in person.
Myself Ramesh, Mithila painter from Madhubani. All my life I sold through the cooperative or when someone came to the house. Tourists sometimes, or people from the city who heard about the village where the painting women are.
My son, he is in Patna for his job, he took photos of maybe eight of my pieces, a fish with the lotus, a Durga, two peacocks, some others. He put them on WhatsApp status and also in some groups he is in. I did not think much of it.
Now in the last month I have sent six paintings by courier. To Delhi. To Bangalore. To one address in Dubai even, a man whose mother is from Darbhanga originally and he wanted something for his wall. These people never touched the paper, never saw the pigment. They saw a phone photo and they trusted it.
This is strange to me. In my market, the buyer wants to see the line work up close, wants to know the colour is natural, wants to hold it. But my son says this is how it works now. I am grateful, truly, but also I am thinking, what if the photo does not show the real thing? I use geru and rice paste and lamp black, the photo cannot show that. But the buyers are happy when the parcel arrives.
I do not understand this new way but I cannot argue with the orders. Anyone else selling traditional craft online and feeling this same confusion?🙂
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This is interesting. The screen flattens everything, scale, surface, the way pigment sits, but it also removes something that can get in the way. The frame of the gallery, the expectation, the sense that you're supposed to decide if something is "good." On a phone, in a group chat, someone just sees the fish and the lotus and something in them says yes.
I've had paintings end up in places I never exhibited, someone's hallway in Oslo, an office in São Paulo, through photos I never posted myself. There's a kind of trust in it I find humbling. The work travels on its own logic.
Six paintings in a month from a WhatsApp status. That's something. Your son did you a real service, even if he laughs at the wrapping.
That bit about the work traveling on its own logic, yes. I think a lot about how little control you actually have over where a piece ends up or what it means to someone. You put the thing out and it's not really yours anymore. The screen strips context but it also strips the noise. Someone just sees the image, no white walls, no price list, no one telling them what to think.
You are right ji. When I pack a painting I think, this is going somewhere I will never see, to a wall I do not know. It is strange but also not sad. The painting was never fully mine anyway. My mother taught me that. You learn the lines, you learn the colours, but the thing itself goes where it has to go.
Yes, you said it well. The screen does flatten, but maybe it also makes the thing quieter in a good way. When someone sees it on a phone they are not thinking "is this good art or not good art." They are just seeing a fish and a lotus and it means something to them. That is closer to how we have always thought about it in our tradition, the meaning is first, the judgment is not so important.
And you are right about the control also. I never imagined a painting of mine would go to Dubai. But the man saw it in a group, his mother is from Bihar originally, she recognized the style. So it found its way. The work knows where it needs to go, maybe more than we do.