Adventures of a Salesman in Art World – Part 1

Mr Chandrashekhar Ojha, former Marketing Manager of Camlin has immense passion for the field of art. He joined Camlin in 1985 and continued with the same organization till his retirement. Throughout his career, he gathered a wealth of insights about the art world through his interactions with artists and art lovers. As a salesperson, he also encountered challenges which he took head on, and continued learning about the field through his minute observations and an undying spirit of learning. Mr Ojha is going to share his insights in an interesting manner through this series – ‘Adventures of a Salesman in Art World’.

Part 1 – Entering the World of Art

Now that I have retired after an almost four-decade long association with Camlin, I feel nostalgic about the journey. Since I have enjoyed each moment of it, I would like to relive the important moments and celebrate the people who made this journey memorable. The best way for this is to talk about it, share it. So, let’s get going.

On 3^rd June 1985 I joined the Camel Caravan as a salesman for Art Material Division at Jodhpur HQ. I was the first to be posted there and also was the first unfortunate one to not get two weeks’ lab training in Mumbai under the best teacher possible, ‘Dada’ – Mr Subhash Dandekar, Managing Director of Camel. However, after a week-long training in Delhi I joined my HQ. My connection with the world of art at that point of time was limited to the drawings and paintings of my father and uncles as well as a catalogue of Hermitage, which I had bought from a book exhibition.

My territory comprised of Southwest Rajasthan, from Mt. Abu on one end, to Pilani on the other, making me the ‘real Camel’. At that time, the entire area had no art college and there were just a few traditional artists and fewer contemporary ones. The art material sales were pathetic and that too comprised mostly of Drawing Inks and Poster Colours. There was a limited sales of student oil colours and almost none of Artist oil colours and acrylic colours, leave aside medium. Our dependence was overwhelmingly on school stuff (Crayons, Pastels, Geo Box & pencils etc.) and applied art material like drawing inks & poster colours.

Merta City, the birthplace of Bhakti Poet Meerabai was a travelling town, which I used to visit once in a quarter. It had a couple of small stationery stores, who were our customers. Once I was passing by a paint shop and the owner hailed me to my surprise. Learning that I represent Camlin, he invited me in, offered a seat and asked about Artist Oil Colours (AOC). I was surprised that when there were hardly any sales of AOC in Jodhpur, what he would do with it in a small town like Merta? But he was confident that he wanted to buy AOC. I was informed that there were many large mansions in the town which get painted at regular intervals. The rich owners were not happy with the readymade shades of paints and hence commissioned a local artist to create special shades of paints with AOC.

This was a big learning for me and after that the paint shops became my regular customers and I did good business with them. Even now, when all the paint companies have introduced a vast range of computer-generated designer shades, the prominent paint shops, even in Mumbai, sell artist oil colours and acrylic colours. I also got the opportunity to assist in many restoration projects later.

A world-renowned realistic painter, A. H. Muller spent his last days in Jodhpur and inspired many artists to follow him. Prominent of them were the uncle-nephew duo of Mr Mohan and Mr Jyotiswaroop Sharma. When I met them first, I was told by Mohanji about a few shades which tend to fade soon. In my excitement, I shot the feedback promptly to HO, which was answered as promptly. It was not the kind of appreciative one that I had expected but was rather reprimanding. My attention was drawn to the permanency rating of the shade, which was ‘D’ (Fugitive) and hence such behaviour was natural.  I was advised to check such details always and make the users aware of the same.

This instance made me conscious of the nature of shades based on the pigments and motivated me to study them further. For that I voraciously consumed the material provided by the company such as the catalogue, the product literature as well as the ‘Our Colours’ booklet, penned by Dada. I obtained a copy of a W&N (Winsor and Newton) catalogue I found with Shanti Bhandar, Jaipur (now defunct). This remained with me all through my career as my support system and helped me a lot in many sticky situations, like this one:

A prominent artist from Rajasthan, whose name is withheld intentionally, was fond of running down the brand and products in the presence of company employees. Once when he trashed a shade, I requested him to show me the issue in application, so that the issue could be resolved. He promptly fished out a Crimson Lake (Alizarin) tube of W&N and compared it with Camel’s Crimson Lake. On my objecting for comparing different shades, he claimed that both were the same only. When I showed him the copy of old W&N catalogue, wherein it was categorically mentioned that they refer their Alizarin Crimson as Crimson Lake (Alizarin), he calmed down and never ever indulged into such practices, at least in my presence.

The most important addition to this knowledge bank of mine came from Prof Baburao Sadwelkar, the former Dean of Sir J J School of Art, Mumbai. We had a training session for team in Mumbai in 1989, in which along with many demos by luminaries of Mumbai art world, Prof Sadwelkar conducted a session on Materials and Methods. He was thorough and impressive and hence, had a lasting impact on me. The resource material provided by him during the session became my life-long companion and proved handy in discussing the products related issues with many artists. It was a vital input while creating the content for the consumer awareness program on art materials.

I am a humble student of Dada, Vahini (Smt Rajani Subhash Dandekar), Prof Sadwelkar and many more such Gurus, who came across in my life and enriched me with their wisdom. May God bless them all.

Chandrashekhar Ojha

To continue to the second part of the article, click here.

Adventures of a Salesman in Art World – Part 2