Home Is Where The Art Is

A bunch of smart women artists in the Capital are raking in the moolah, all from the comfort of their homes

In the public mind, gallery growth is synonymous with artists willingly entrusting their art sales to these outlets and getting on with the business of painting. But of late, a rising trend among women artists in the Capital has been to use their home spaces for the dual purpose of creating as well as exhibiting their art. In the bargain, their homes have been transformed into swank show spaces, where the decor takes on a character around their art.

One of the first to implement the idea was artist Sarla Chandra. Having moved into the Capital after a twenty-year stint at Hyderabad, where she had developed personal equations with the art fraternity, she sorely missed the connectivity that Hyderabad had offered. “In Hyderabad, business buyers and collectors would come home to meet me. I used to work with artists at their homes, at galleries, where we discussed new techniques, trends and ideas, freely and expansively,” she says.

The Delhi art scene, she found, was aggressively gallery-based, and initially Sarla too tried to follow suit. “Galleries took my work gladly. But to them, I was a secondary person. They were totally impersonal and the relationship was only linked to accounting and stock ledgers. For me, art is a medium of togetherness, with or without its commercial implications. I am keen to have people connect personally with my painting and not just be impersonal buyers,” she maintains.

To establish this unique format of art deals, Chandra opened the doors of her own home, after she had set up her works with the decor centred around them. “My art is now attracting a larger number of viewers and buyers,” she contends. “Recently, my home space became the venue of an international Ramayana conference, when one of the organisers happened to call and spotted my works done on the Ramayana, where it was Hanuman who was made the central figure in the series. The conference delegates enjoyed the surroundings of my home, and several of them were keen to make purchases there and then. I held them back and advised them to view the works at least three or four times, at leisure, and then make the final decision. All this,” she says, “would have been impossible in a gallery as the logistics would not permit such personal attention to the works of a single artist.”

For Suchi Khanna, it was the time-saving factor that dictated her decision to open up her home as a place to display her art, once she was given an entire floor space by her in-laws in their joint family home. “Travelling to a studio and meeting up with clients meant that I’d have to dress up, entertain buyers and juggle time for art classes at school,” she points out. “Displaying my works at home has actually given my clients the opportunity to make smart purchases. When the paintings are placed in a way they would be displayed in the buyer’s home, he or she can assess how it would look when it is put up on their own walls. On my part, I have taken care to keep the wall colours muted, the lighting soft yet focused and the artefacts and plants aesthetically coordinated. People have told me that there is nothing flamboyant, yet just what they had in mind for their home. Even my parents-in-law have been enthusiastic about my idea and my mother-in-law flaunts me among her friends,” she laughs.

Artist Bharti Singh replaces the soft furnishings and moves around artefacts to suit the paintings she puts up on the walls. “At present, the room is dominated by a painting of Shakti in the form of Durga. But once that painting gets sold, and a painting from my current series on Krishna takes its place, the red and gold soft furnishings will be changed with blues and greens. Also, the Lakshmi for the entrance complements the Durga in the sitting area. Since I don’t repeat a painting, this painting too will be moved,” she explains.

But the home as gallery substitute was not her initial choice. “Earlier, I was a realistic painter of Indian wildlife, particularly the tiger, and other endangered species. My clients included the WWF. When I took these works to galleries, they were reluctant to promote them as there were not too many artists doing such work,” says Singh. “But I wanted to do more work, so I thought of a home gallery, and well, clients still come to me,” she smiles.

So far, so good. But one source of worry is letting complete strangers into their homes. “When it is corporates, I always direct them to my website,” says Suchi.

Singh lets in strangers only if they come with a recommendation from a friend or acquaintance. “Even friends and clients are refused entrance into my home if I am painting because interruptions make me lose the chain of creativity and I cannot get back to it easily. So I pick and choose the times when I allow visitors into my home—but once they come in, with prior appointment, they are welcome to even admire the paintings in my bedroom,” she says.

Circumventing the disadvantages of gallery dependence with their ‘home shows’, these artists have also been able to maintain cordial relationships with the galleries that stock their work. “I work with only two galleries at a time,” says Singh. For Khanna, the experience of working with a single gallery is adequate. “Art is not a commodity like potatoes and onions. I look to build ties with the gallery and I like to work with a gallery that respects this friendship.” Chandra, in fact, is looking forward to extending her space as a gallery extension and even inviting other artists to hold exhibitions from time to time. Quite a home run for art, this.

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Subra Mazumdar