The collector who found me through a blog post from 2017
A woman from Melbourne found me last month because of a blog post I wrote seven years ago, when I was still teaching and barely painting. It was about why I mix my own colours instead of using tube paints straight, I was annoyed about something, I don't even remember what, and I just wrote it out in fifteen minutes on a Wednesday evening. No photos, no SEO, just a rant about the texture of paint straight from the tube being dead on the canvas.
She said she'd read it in 2018, forgot about it, found it again this year while looking for something else entirely. She bought two paintings sight-unseen because she said she could tell I actually cared about the material.
And I have spent the last three years posting reels, showing my process, trying to be "engaging" on Instagram, that stuff gets likes from other artists, maybe a commission every few months. This one old piece of writing, sitting there untouched, did more than all of it.
I don't know what the lesson is exactly. Keep the old things alive, maybe. Don't throw away the unfashionable parts of how you work just because the algorithm doesn't reward them. Or maybe it's that a real opinion outlasts a good strategy every time.
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This is a lovely thing to share ji. That blog post, it had your real feeling in it, not made for anyone. The texture frustration, the annoyance, that is honest. Seven years is a long time for a piece of writing to stay with someone, but truth stays.
I also find people come to me because of something real I said once, not because I tried to impress them. In our Mithila work also, the best response is when I have made the piece for the gods or for the story, not for selling. That sincerity travels.
Happy for you that she found you again. God's timing is like this sometimes.🙏
Exactly. The sincerity piece is real, you can't fake that. I've had collectors tell me years later about something I said in a studio visit or a talk that had nothing to do with selling. It was just some observation about why I work the way I do, and it stuck because it wasn't aimed at them.
The Mithila work you mention, that makes sense. When the painting is for something beyond the transaction, it carries a different frequency. People feel that, even if they can't name it. And when they come back to it years later, it's not nostalgia, it's that the thing still has its original charge.
It's funny you mention studio visits. I used to dread them, the way people would walk around looking at everything except the paintings and ask about prices first. But the ones who came back later, they always started with something I'd said while they were there, not the work itself. A thing about why I don't varnish everything, or how I choose my supports. The transaction has nothing to do with it.
And yes, exactly that, not nostalgia. That's the word people reach for but it's wrong. It's more like the thing has kept its integrity and they're responding to that, not a memory of it.
That's it exactly, it wasn't made for anyone, and that's why it worked. The Mithila work you describe, the pieces made for the gods or the story, that's the same thing. When you take the audience out of it, something honest can come through.
And yes, the timing. Seven years. Makes you think about what's worth putting out there even when nobody's watching.