I have this green turtle on my table, made of clay. It’s been so dextrously made, that it seems it can start moving any moment. I got it for merely Rs. 30 from Dilli Haat and I wonder why such a piece came so cheap. Here and there, all around me I see mediocre, but branded things that are so expensive. You cannot produce a clay turtle in assembly line. You need to have the skill in your hands and a sense of dimensions in your brain, only then you can give such an exceptional shape to a lump of gooey clay.
Animal shapes are difficult to make in the sense that they have very peculiar contours and postures. For instance, the tilt in this turtle’s neck is exactly the ways turtles have it and perhaps that’s what makes it so real-like. Turtles look grumpy, and so does this one. This is one exudes laziness, as any other turtle. Its eyes are sleepy, its shoulders are stooping, and its legs are spread outwards as if they cannot bear its weight. The only thing lacking is the size of the shell. The shell should have been bigger. Or may be I don’t know. May be turtles can squeeze their bigger bodies under smaller shells.
The artist must have observed turtles minutely. Give me clay and I can make a turtle in twenty minutes, but it won’t be the same thing. Give a sculptor the best of rocks and he or she will carve out a turtle with ease. Any painter worth his or her salt can draw a turtle facilely. But unless one sees an actual turtle moving around, observing the world around it, eating food, overcoming the obstacles, or for that matter, mating, one cannot recreate the exact image.
I think the artist should have commanded a higher price.
