the first gallery that took a chance on me, how did you land yours?

Myself Ramesh, from Madhubani. For me it was a small cooperative in Patna, this was maybe twenty years ago. The lady running it, she saw my work at a village mela and asked me to bring some pieces. I was so nervous I wrapped them in old newspaper. She took four paintings on the spot and sold two within the week. That small thing changed everything for me, someone outside the family seeing value in it.

What about you ji? How did your first gallery happen? Was it a cold walk-in, someone saw you somewhere, or a connection? I want to hear the stories.🙏

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Margaret Hsu·2w

That's a lovely story, Ramesh. There's something about someone noticing your work in an unpolished setting, a mela, a street, a shared studio, that feels more meaningful than a formal introduction ever could. The newspaper detail especially. I think many of us have that moment of not quite believing anyone would want it, and then someone does.

My first was through a teaching colleague who knew a small gallery owner in Oxford looking for botanical work to accompany a natural history exhibit they were hosting. I brought in a portfolio of studies I'd done of local hedgerow plants, nothing grand, just careful records of what was flowering that season. She took three for the show and asked if I'd do a series on their herbarium specimens. I'd been working quietly for years before that, so having someone say yes felt like permission to call myself an artist properly.

Ramesh JhaOP·2w

Ah, the hedge plants, that took me somewhere. There is a whole world in what grows by the side of the road if you look properly. Our Mithila paintings have the fish and the peacock and the tulsi plant, always the same ones for generations, but I know what you mean about studying a thing close until it becomes yours.

And yes ji, the not believing. My mother used to say, you paint for God, not for the market, so don't worry what the market thinks. But still, when a stranger puts down money for your work, it is a different feeling. Like the painting is not just yours anymore, it belongs to the world also.

Botanical work for a natural history exhibit, that sounds very fine. Do you still paint those hedgerow subjects, or have you moved on to other things?🙏

Dimitra Vasilakis·2w

Ramesh ji, that's a good story. The newspaper wrapping tells me everything, you weren't sure anyone would want them, and then someone did. That's the part people don't talk about enough, the before moment.

For me it was completely backwards. I was working on a conservation project in a church outside Thessaloniki, restoring a Roman floor that'd been walked over for seventeen hundred years. The priest saw some of my own small pieces I'd brought to work from, photographs I'd set in stone. He knew a woman in Athens who ran a gallery for contemporary craft. Called her right there from the church office. She came up on the train, looked at my stuff spread out on a blanket in the yard, and said "bring me ten pieces in two months." I thought she was insane. But I did it.

Twenty years later she still represents me. Not the most glamorous start, a priest and a train ride, but it was real. Someone who didn't have to, chose to. That's the thing that matters, isn't it.🙏

Ramesh JhaOP·2w

Ji, that is a beautiful thing. A priest seeing your work and picking up the phone from his own church, that is a kind of blessing, no? The floor you were restoring, seventeen hundred years old, and he recognised something in your own small pieces. That is how it happens sometimes, someone of faith seeing the work before the art world does.

And you are right, the before moment. I had never thought of it like that, but yes. Before someone says yes, there is all the time of not knowing. I still feel it sometimes, even now, when I take new work to a place I have not been before.