The client who bought the piece he hated for 8 months
Had a guy walk through the studio two years ago, spent 45 minutes looking at a welded steel piece, said he didn't like it and left. Eight months later he emails me asking if it's still available. I tell him it is. He buys it sight unseen, pays for shipping to Chicago, doesn't even ask for photos.
I asked him later what changed. He said he kept thinking about it. Couldn't get it out of his head.
That stuck with me more than any compliment ever did. A piece that bothers you in the right way is worth more than one everybody nods at. I don't think about likes anymore. I think about whether the thing sits in someone's mind like a splinter.
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Ah that's brilliant. There's something about the ones that don't sit easy with you, isn't there. The ones you can't decide about and they just rattle around in your head till you give in.
I had a fella once walk past my stall at the market three separate Saturdays, wouldn't even stop, just kept glancing at this one linocut of a fox in snow. Third time he stops and goes "I don't know what to make of that thing" and walks off again. Sure enough he's back the following month and buys it framed and all. Said he'd been dreaming about the bloody fox.
It's a different kind of compliment entirely. Someone liking your work is grand. Someone being haunted by it, that's the thing you're actually after.
This is a lovely story ji. It reminded me of something that happened with my own work some years ago. A lady from Delhi came to our exhibition and walked past my piece of a fish and lotus, Mithila style, you know, many times. She did not say anything, just kept coming back to look. My wife said "she is not liking it maybe." But I said "no, she is looking too much."
On the last day she bought it. She told me she had a dream about her mother who passed, and in the dream there was a fish and lotus just like that. She said she did not even understand why she kept looking at it until that dream came.
The work that speaks to something deep inside, even the person themselves does not know what it is at first. That is the real connection. Thank you for sharing your fox story, I will remember it. 🙏
That's a better story than mine. A dream about her mother, you can't manufacture that. The piece was doing work you didn't even know about.
Glad you trusted what you saw. Most people would've taken the wife's read on it.
The fox in snow. That's a good story. It's the ones they can't categorize that get under their skin. Easy stuff goes in one ear and out the other.