Art: Treasure or Product?

A few years ago, my neighbour’s friend visited my studio to see my art. She fell in love with what she saw and praised my work generously. It was one of the most overwhelming interactions I had experienced in a long time.

Silvi di is an activist and a very simple, grounded woman. The next day, before leaving, she bought one of my paintings. She chose a work that was very close to my heart, one from my early days as an artist. I told her the listed price and offered her a friend’s discount. She refused. Instead, she paid the full amount.

As she was leaving with the painting, I thanked her profusely. She stopped me and said,

“I should be the one thanking you. It is your art, your creation. A part of you lives on that canvas, and you have entrusted it to me to keep for the rest of my life. It is your treasure, and I am its custodian. For that, I have only given you a token amount.”

I was taken aback. People like this exist?

A few weeks ago, another friend’s friend came home to see my work. He liked something and asked the price. I offered him a friend’s discount on the listed price. He negotiated further, trying to bring the price down. His logic: “Anything unsold from a show is leftover work, and you should give a discount.”

I was taken aback again. People like this also exist.

Very few artists sell all their work at an exhibition. We labour for years before we put together a show, fully aware that there is no guarantee of sales. What is guaranteed is a wide range of encounters with people interested in art. Some will treat your work as a treasure they are privileged to hold. Others will treat it like a product to be bargained over.

To all my artist friends, I wish you many more encounters with people like Silvi di—those who recognise your work as a treasure.

Shubhra

January 15, 2026

… And have learned to be the clay

#MyThursdayThing

After months of deliberation and planning one morning in March 2015, I took the plunge and entered the world of ceramic. As I walked on the plush grounds of Sanskriti Kala Kendra I had no idea what this new world had in store for me. I met my teacher (now friend), Aniruddh, an incredible artist from Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal, who had joined Sanskriti’s Pottery Center as an instructor. The first task he gave me was to wedge a handful of clay and then to make whatever I wished with it. As I shaped and coiled and made slabs of my clay, I was reminded of the childhood days when we played with play-dough. It was a good experience indeed, but only when I sat at the wheel and put that lump of clay on the centre did I realize the world of clay that awaited me. The first feel of clay in my hands on a speeding wheel, me trying to tame it, pulling it and then centering it—all this is etched in my memory for it gave me an insight into a potter’s life. “Ye mat samjho ki tum clay ko centre kar rahi ho, balki dhyan rakho ki ye clay tumko centre kar rahi hai (Don’t think you are centering the clay. In fact, it is the clay that is centering you.)”, said Aniruddh as he helped me. So true this is, for the clay to be centred, the body, the mind, the breath, the entire focus has to be aligned with each other. This was the first and the most important of the several lessons I learnt.

The world of ceramic is very different from the world of painting. I have been painting for many years now. Most of my works generally take shape in my thoughts and then ideas get formed and firmed sometimes in a sketchbook and sometimes straight on a canvas. Layers upon layers and several iterations later, the work finally gets ready. I do not consider it complete until I feel satisfied, and until such time, it stays on the easel. Should an idea come up while the work is in progress, the entire work is capable of being altered. Whenever my students feel afraid to try something new I tell them, “go ahead, try it, it’s just a painting, not life. If you don’t like it, paint over it and start afresh.” However, there is no such luck in any ceramic work. This was the second lesson I learnt.

While centering the clay or throwing* our pots and plates on a wheel is a challenge, it can still be mastered. It is a skill that needs to be acquired, practised and then mastered. Daily throwing and then destroying all that we made was how the first few days on the wheel went. The real challenge is not even ideating what to make or glazing it after it has been bisque** fired. The real challenge is much deeper and much harder. It is to let go of all attachment, all ego and disappointment.

Sculptures by Shubhra Chaturvedi

As a ceramic artist, we face these challenges on a daily basis. The clay needs to be just right—not too dry and not too wet. It needs to have been wedged properly, for if there are air bubbles, the work will crack on firing or may not even throw properly. If the clay centers, the work needs to be thrown properly. If everything goes right, the work is dried and then put through a bisque firing (low-temperature firing).This hardens the work a bit and enables for the glaze to be applied. Post glazing, the final firing is done, which is a 3-4 days’ process. You load the items properly and then start the kiln and keep watching till the temperature reaches the desired reading. Then you wait for 24 hours or more for the kiln to cool down. The most exciting process is when the kiln is opened and you wait to see the result of all that you did from the start point till now. The results often throw in a surprise even for the best of the artists and definitely dramatic ones for all those who are new to this game. When the work goes in the kiln and the glaze reacts with heat, what exactly will happen no one knows. The glazes if not applied properly could melt and the work could be stuck to the bed of the kiln and may also break while taking it out. There could be a lack of oxygen resulting in reduction (which means more carbon inside) and that reduction could lead to different results. There could be cracking of work inside the kiln if the pots were not thrown properly or glazed properly. What all could go wrong is endless. For artists like Aniruddh, who has now been working in clay for more than 25 years or so, the final result can still be predicted. They have now learnt what to do and what not to do for the desired effect. For people like me each time the work comes out of the kiln there is joy and trauma at the same time.

Contrast this with the world of painting where the desired outcome can be controlled and or worked around in case things do not go the planned way. In the realm of the clay world, if something goes wrong, it needs to be destroyed and abandoned and fresh work needs to be done. Not only this, once a painting is finished, it can be packed and stored or hung on a wall. A work in ceramic or stoneware as it is also called, needs to be handled with utmost care all its life, while storing, while exhibiting, while transporting and even when it is bought/sold, with the new owner.

Broken Bowl

A bowl that I made a few years back, one that was perfectly thrown and beautifully glazed and fired, suddenly fell from my hands and broke. Shattered in many pieces and along with it, it shattered my ego, my heart and taught me to let go. I was so disappointed and when I shared it with Aniruddh, he calmly replied, “koi baat nahi tum waise 10 bowl aur bana sakti ho(doesn’t matter, you can make 10 more like that)”. Is this why ceramic artists have no attachment to their creation? They know they can make it again. I wouldn’t know it for sure. There definitely is a formula and if all is done to the T, similar works can be produced. In painting, I doubt if I can replicate my own work again.

So if there is so much risk, pain, uncertainty in working with clay, why do we work in clay? Why are there so many ceramic artists, why are the potters in the village churning out earthenware like matkas, kulhads, surahi, gamla (crock, ewer, cups, planters)etc? I don’t have the answer for all, but for myself and a few I know, working with clay means being connected with the earth. Moulding the clay, shaping the clay to me means shaping a part of me and my world. Looking at the cracks in pots and plates enables me to accept the fragility of art and of life. It also gives me confidence that I can do it again. To break the work if it has got spoilt is the most devastating and yet the most grounding experience an artist, especially a beginner, can go through. On the other hand, the surprise that the kiln offers each time is the biggest joy. To hold in hand a work that sometime back was shaped on a wheel or by hand gives a high that no other intoxication can replace.

However the lessons of detachment, flexibility (to be moulded and shaped) and the endurance (to get fired), that clay teaches are those that stay throughout life and are more deep-rooted in life’s philosophies than the art of ceramic work.

Working in clay always reminds me of Harindranath Chattopadhyay’s lines in his poem Shaper and Shaped …

Bowls by Shubhra Chaturvedi

In days gone by I used to be
A potter who would feel
His fingers mould the yielding clay
To patterns on his wheel;
But now, through wisdom lately-won,
That pride has died away:
I have ceased to be the potter
And have learned to be the clay.

Inspired by these words and my own experiences in my studios, my aim is, to cease to be the painter/potter and learn to be the paint/clay...

©Shubhra
#12,  September 10, 2020

* Throwing: The process when the clay on the wheel is given shape into the desired form
** Bisque firining: A low temperature firing is done prior to final firing to harden the work and enable glazing

#MyThursdayThing will be published every Thursday, on my blog https://shubhrathoughts.blogspot.com/  and shared on my social media handles.

Drop that fear…

#MyThursdayThing

Have you ever paid attention when a child is drawing something that they see or imagine? Their version of a face, a chair, a house, a car or any scene from their imagination? Have you ever noticed the bold uninhibited lines? Their detailing, the visual stories? When was the last time you saw a child draw? Those who have kids at home or in extended family/circle would have seen a lot of art from kids, I am sure.

 I experience kids’ art very closely. For one, I have my nieces and a nephew in my family (all less than 10 years of age) but more than that I have more than a dozen kids I teach art to, twice a week.  I see their responses to an idea and how they take it to another level. Their stories and then their colours add magic to their drawing sheet.  It is sheer pleasure, a visual treat to work with them. There is a famous quote from Picasso, “Every child is a born artist” and I so believe in it. However, as kids progress in the education system, most of them shy away from the drawing that they so uninhibitedly did a few years ago. Somehow, I feel, the right and wrong, good and bad, this way and that way come in between. But the one reason I see—perhaps the single most important cause—for children to abandon art in general or drawing in particular is fear of mistakes and a loss of spontaneity.

I realised this even more so in the last two weeks, when I happened to attend a spontaneous drawing workshop by artist Gopika Nath. The 10-day workshop was conducted on WhatsApp and had exercises which were aimed at making one shed inhibition and experiment with different techniques and mediums and tools. For example, we had to draw to music with eyes closed, or we had to see video clips of dance performances and draw quick one-second sketches or draw directly with a pen without lifting  the pen from the paper, even draw with different tools other than pen/pencil/brush, like a jhadutilli (a twig from a broom) or a stone or a piece of cardboard. Whatever one fancied, one could use. The most interesting for me was drawing with the non-dominant hand and blind contour drawings.

This meant drawing with a pen directly with my left hand and also drawing without looking at the paper and without lifting my pen. These were timed exercises and I had such fun. The results were childlike and bold. Drawing directly with pen on my sketch book gave me such confidence that I had never experienced before despite drawing and sketching now for many years. The one thing that this exercise enabled in me was letting go of the fear of that line on paper. Whatever came out on the paper was spontaneous and actually the result of eye and hand coordination. The mind was asked to shut up and it was the intuition at work. We were asked to focus on what we felt when attempting the exercise. I felt one with children I teach. Suddenly I experienced their simplicity, their freedom, their intuition and their uninhibited bold strokes.

About a decade ago, I had attended a workshop on drawing and sketching with Mark Warner, someone who is considered the best in teaching the same, and I remember how he had asked us to attempt similar exercises then. I had loved the exercises even then, but I wasn’t awed by my own results.

I probably laughed at them and never saw what they were intended to make me see. Maybe I was not ready to let go of my fears or maybe I didn’t pay much attention to the lines and forms and feelings and just laughed at the crooked result. Maybe I was too caught up in the right and wrong or maybe the time had not come. I did not understand then, what I understood now. The importance of letting go of fear, the importance of attempting that which one is unsure of. The importance of discovering new lines and forms and expressions, the importance of introducing new things like these into your daily practice and then the confidence rubs off on all the different works that one attempts.

From the kids whom I teach and from the last 10 days of work, I learnt a whole new way to deal with my ideas. I learnt a lot about art, drawing, spontaneity, myself and my responses, but most of all I realised that anybody can draw.

If you can see, you can draw. All we need is to lift that pen from our table, take that paper and just draw what we see. Leave the judgement of right and wrong aside. Get into a childlike frame of mind and just draw. Sometimes with left hand, sometimes with right, sometimes without seeing the paper, sometimes to the tune of music and sometimes abandon that pen and just pick whatever you can find, dip in some ink or paints and just draw.

I am thankful to my mentors and my students (my children) for helping me finally see what it takes to draw like a child… Just drop that fear!

©Shubhra
#8  July 30th, 2020

#MyThursdayThing will be published every Thursday, on my blog https://shubhrathoughts.blogspot.com/  and shared on my social media handles.