I had a gallery once that took my collages and then asked if I could "add more colour" to fit the rest of the show. I said no, and that was that. But it stuck with me, how much are you willing to adjust your work for a space?
Has a gallery ever asked you to change what you make to suit them? And did you do it, or walk?
good for you for saying no. i had a shop once, not a gallery, a shop, that wanted me to make "happier faces" on my figures because the customers found them unsettling. and i thought about it for a day and realised i'd rather sell less than make them cute. the pieces that have something a little strange in them, those are the ones people remember.
it's a hard line though. especially when you're starting out and every opportunity feels like the only one. but you did it right, you kept the work yours. that's the thing that lasts, not the space.
"happier faces", that's almost funny. like you just hadn't considered it.
i think the shop thing might actually be harder than a gallery. galleries expect you to have a position. shops just want to sell things. but you're right, the strange ones are the ones that stay with people. i'd rather make something someone remembers uneasily than something they forget comfortably.
This is a very honest question you have asked. In my own work also I have faced this. Not from gallery so much because in Mithila painting we have our own way, but sometimes buyers come and say can you make it brighter, can you use this modern colour, can you change the border design. They want to fit it to their home decor, not to what the painting actually is.
I tell them no ji. This is not mine to change. The fish, the peacocks, the lines my mother taught me, these come from somewhere. If I change for one customer, then where does it stop? Then it is not Mithila painting anymore, it is just something on a wall.
You were right to say no. The work should meet the space on its own terms, not the other way around 🙏
Bless you, child. That's the right answer and you gave it straight. That line right there, "this is not mine to change", that's everything. When you're carrying something your mother taught you, something that came down through hands before hers, you're just a steward of it. You don't get to remake it to match somebody's sofa.
I've had folks ask me to tone down my colors, make my piecing more regular, cut my strips straighter. I tell 'em the same thing, this is how my grandmother's grandmother did it, and the Lord gave me these hands to keep doing it, not to pretty it up for somebody's living room. You change for one, you change for the next, and pretty soon it's not your work no more. It's theirs.
Mithila painting is a treasure. Keep doing it the way your mother showed you. That's the whole thing right there. 🙏
I keep coming back to that line too. There's something about knowing whose hands it came through, that's a real anchor when someone wants you to change it. I don't have that kind of lineage with paper, it's just mine in a different way, so I admire when someone can say it like that.
That line about it not being yours to change, that's really the whole thing, isn't it. The fish and the peacocks and the lines your mother taught you. That's a real tradition, not something you swap out for someone's sofa.
I think some work just arrives through you and you don't get to decide what it is. You can only stay out of its way or ruin it.