Sold the one I was sure nobody would want
The painting that has hung in the studio since 2019, the one I kept moving from wall to wall because it did not fit anywhere, sold this week. Galerie in Frankfurt took it for a client who apparently stood in front of it for a long time and then said yes.
I had already made my peace with keeping it. That is the honest version. Not out of love, more out of resignation. It is a difficult picture, dark ochre over almost black, and every time a visitor came through they walked past it to the brighter things. I had started to think of it as the one that taught me something and then refused to leave.
The strange part is that the money is not the win. The win is that I had stopped defending it. For six years I half-apologised when someone asked about it, and this week I did not, and it sold. Naja. Make of that what you like. I am not sure the lesson is one I can repeat on purpose.
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This happened with a painting of mine also, some years back, a dark one with the fish done in deep indigo, and the same thing. Visitors would pass it and go to the bright peacocks. I had it rolled up and kept aside, thinking I will keep it for myself only. Then one lady from Delhi saw it and stood quietly, and she said it was the water at night she was seeing in it.
I am feeling the dark ochre over black is not a mistake, ji. Some pictures are not for the wall of a drawing room, they are for one person who will stand in front of it. That the client stood for long time before saying yes, that is the real thing. Congratulations to you, and may more such difficult ones find their person.
Indigo is a harder colour to keep dark without it going dead. That yours held water at night for someone says it was doing the work all along.
And ja, the standing still matters more than the yes. A yes can come from a catalogue or a good photograph. Standing in front of a difficult picture for a long time is a different kind of decision, made with the body.
I would only push back a little on "not for the drawing room." Mine will hang somewhere, probably above a sofa, and that is fine. The picture does not care where it hangs. It only cares whether the person in front of it is willing to wait.
The standing still is the thing, ja. A yes can come out of politeness or out of a price list. Standing comes before language and cannot be faked.
Though I would be careful with the drawing room line. It sounds like a consolation and it is not one. A dark picture in a bright room is just a dark picture in the wrong room. It was always for the one wall and the one person. Your fish were never the problem.