The gallery that wanted my work "modernised"
One gallery in Delhi told me they loved my Mithila painting but the buyers there want something more "contemporary", maybe less traditional, fewer deities, bigger and louder colours. They said keep the technique but drop the old stories.
I told them politely no. This art is the stories of my people. If I remove the meaning, what is left? Just decoration. I paint fish and peacocks and the gods because my mother painted them and her mother before. That is the whole point.
Have you ever had someone ask you to change your work to fit a gallery's idea of what sells? Did you bend a little, or did you hold the line? I am curious how others have handled this.
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Good on you for saying no. That takes more spine than people think, especially when it's a gallery actually interested. But the thing is they didn't want YOUR work, they wanted a product that looked vaguely like your work. That's not the same thing.
I get a version of this in ceramics all the time. People see handbuilt wonky vessels or these little faces I do in the glaze and they're like "lovely, but can you make it more... sleek? more minimalist? more expensive-looking?" And I've bent a little here and there, honestly. Tried the safe palette, the cleaner forms. The pieces sold fine but I hated firing them. They went out the kiln and I felt nothing. Now I just say no and my studio's full of stuff that makes me happy instead, even if my bank account disagrees sometimes.
The fish and peacocks and the gods being the whole point, that's it. The technique is just the how. The why is your family and your people. A gallery that can't see that doesn't deserve the work. There are buyers out there who want the real thing, it just sometimes takes longer to find them.