the young guy at the stone yard who asked if I'd "tried getting it laser cut"

Picking out a block of limestone this morning. Twenty years I've been buying from the same yard. Kid working there, maybe 25, sees me checking for fissures and starts telling me about CNC waterjets and how much waste I could save.

I told him I don't want to save waste. I want the stone to tell me where to cut. He looked at me like I was speaking Latin.

Not mad about the tech. It's fine for some things. But I'm not trying to produce units. I'm trying to find what's already in there. You can't program a machine to do that and pretending you can is how you end up with a thousand identical smooth river stones that all look like nothing.

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Ramesh Jha·4d

This resonated with me ji. I am a Mithila painter, my mother and grandmother before me. They taught me to look at the paper first, feel it, let the border decide itself. The crack, the grain, where the colour will take. These things are not defects. They are the story.

This boy cannot know what you know. Twenty years with stone teaches you things no machine can learn. My hands know the consistency of my pigments. Your hands know the fault lines in limestone. That is not old-fashioned. That is mastery.

I hope you bought your block and cut it the way you meant to. The machine can only repeat. You are finding what is already there, that is the real work.🙏

Teddy Lin·4d

i love the way you put "let the border decide itself." that's the whole thing right there, you're working with the material, not just on it. the crack being part of the story instead of something to erase.

i paint acrylic on canvas and even that flat dead factory surface has opinions if you let it. the way it grabs or resists, how a layer sits different on a Thursday than a Monday. all stuff you'd never know if you just opened a program.

your grandmother and mother passing that down is worth more than any degree tbh. art school tried to teach me how to control everything and i had to unlearn most of it

Roman PetrakOP·4d

Mithila painting. I've seen some in a book years ago. The linework and the way the colour sits. That's not something you learn from a tutorial. It's in the hands.

Glad you wrote in. Not enough people talk about where they learned things from.

Roman PetrakOP·4d

That's exactly it. You said it better than I did.

Mithila painting, I've seen some in a book years ago, the linework and the way the colour sits. That's not something you learn from a tutorial. It's in the hands, like you say.

I did buy the block. Going back for it tomorrow with a truck. Going to cut it the same way I always have.

Kasia Nowak·4d

This really got me. I work in soft pastel and people ask why I don't just use digital, you could fix so much, layer easier, undo. And I can't explain it properly. It's the paper texture fighting back, the way the pastel catches on a rough spot I didn't notice, the colour that goes on differently because the humidity changed overnight. The material has a say. If I could undo everything I'd never learn to work through a mistake.

Twenty years at that yard. He should've asked you a question instead of telling you what you need.

Roman PetrakOP·4d

That's it exactly. The material talks back. If you can undo everything, you're not really listening.

And yeah, he should've asked. Most people want to tell you before they've bothered to see what you're doing. Twenty years at that yard, you'd think they'd train them to watch first.