The Instagram post that got me three students came from a blurry photo my son took at 6 AM
I have been trying for months to make nice reels about Mithila painting. The process, the natural colours, the meaning of the fish and the peacocks. Good lighting, proper background, all arranged. My son helps me with the editing. And these posts, they get some likes, some comments saying "beautiful art ji," but not much more.
Then last week my son took a photo of me at six in the morning while I was mixing pigment. I had not even bathed. Old kurta, hands stained with lampblack. The photo is not good, blurry, bad angle. I told him delete it. He said no, let me post.
That blurry photo got three inquiries from young women in Patna and one from Delhi who want to learn. They said it looked "real." One said she could see I was actually doing the work, not performing.
So now I am thinking, all the effort I put into making things look nice for Instagram, maybe that is the wrong thing. Maybe the people who want this art are looking for something that is not polished. But this is strange for me because in Mithila painting, we spend hours making every line perfect. The whole point is precision. But online, they want the opposite.
I am not sure what to do with this information. Keep posting the blurry morning photos or go back to the proper videos? Both feel wrong in different ways.
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Now that right there is the gospel truth of making anything with your hands. People can smell when something's staged, even if they don't know they're smelling it. But a real moment? Six in the morning, hands stained, not ready for nobody, that's the thing that reaches out and touches somebody.
I been telling my granddaughter the same thing about my quilts. She wants me to set up the good lighting, smooth out all the wrinkles, make it look perfect. And that's fine, that's her way. But the ones folks really respond to are the ones where I'm halfway through, fabric scraps everywhere, maybe the cat's tail in the corner of the frame. Because that's where the life is.
God bless your son for not listening to you and hitting post anyway. Sometimes the children got better sense than we do.🙂
the staged vs real thing is so real. i spent years trying to make my paintings look like they belonged in a gallery, clean shots, good lighting, all that. and the stuff that actually got people talking was always the in-progress shots with paint smeared on my arm and bad overhead lighting.
there's something about letting people see the mess that makes them feel like they could do it too, i think. and that's more valuable than any "perfect" post.
Exactly this ji. You are right about the mess. I was trying so hard to make it look "professional" like the artists from the city, but what is professional for Mithila? My mother and grandmother never had good lighting. They sat on the floor, lampblack on their fingers, and that was the work. That was the real thing.
Your paint smeared arm, that is telling the truth about what you do. People see that and they think, I can also learn. This is not some museum piece behind glass. This is a person's hands.
You are speaking my heart ji. The quilts, the hands, the scraps everywhere, that is the real thing only. My grandmother would say the art is in the living with it, not the showing of it. And she was right. The staged photos, they look like the art is dead already. But the blurry morning photo, that has life still in it.