Making of this painting was a journey to discover myself

It was my marriage anniversary and my husband wanted to know what I want as a gift. I told him that I want to visit an art gallery; he agreed happily .I am an artist and do paintings, so I just wanted to see others work.

We went to famous art gallery where an exhibition was going on.it was full of marvelous paintings.

The organizer of the gallery is a very nice woman.  When she came to know that I am an artist, she was much interested to display my paintings in her gallery. I could learn many things from her in the short meeting. I promised to come with my painting to display in any next exhibition.

After two months I was there again with my medium sized Madhubani painting. She liked it very much and received nice words of appreciation.

Now she suggested me to work on a big frame and paint a master piece. The size suggested by her was three times of the canvas I usually paint, so I was not sure where will I get that big canvas.

She was much kind to ensure me that she will get it for me.

Within few days I received a call from her that my canvas has been delivered to the gallery and I can pic it up. I was excited, happy, nerves and hopeful al at the same time

Now a new problem started, where a few days ago I was full of ideas, suddenly I was blank. The canvas stood innocently in my study and I was struggling to find a perfect subject or idea to paint on it

Few months went like this. I was not getting a perfect idea and secretly I doubted my ability to paint a giant canvas at the expected level. I was unaware that I was getting in to depression   . I started to get irritated easily; I was not getting happiness in anything. The continuous tension started to affect my health.

By the way finely it was December when I started working on my giant canvas. I named my theme Swapna Lok.

It took me one month to draw my imagination on canvas .on January first I started to paint it and it took three months to complete the painting .Oil paints take time to dry and working on a big canvas is a challenge with oil paint because there are always chances to spoil the earlier work which happened many times and I needed to correct it again and again.

I was working on the canvas almost five to seven hours every day as I do most of my house hold work myself ,my every other responsibility was also suffering. I was not getting proper rest and when I tried to sleep in night, I was all haunted by my painting and amazing ideas to make it more beautiful.

The more I worked on it the more things I discovered to make it amazing. The painting was getting beautiful day by day and my health was getting worse day by day. The last month of working on it was like death bed for me. I was barely able to follow my daily routine, my appetite was gone, I was too weak to stand for long.  Every day I sit for hours and worked on my painting. Finely in march it was complete. The day I did my signature on it, I took the breath of relief .Now it was time to take care of my health.

The making of this painting became a long journey for me. I learn a lot, loose a lot and most importantly I discovered myself  again.