A file picture of a camp at Acharya Nandalal Bose Art Gallery in Sakchi

Love art, but can’t afford to buy reproductions of the Masters, let alone originals? Don’t worry, a four-year-young Jamshedpur art gallery will give you the chance to do up your walls with pocket-friendly paintings.

Also, it’s one thing to look at paintings hanging on exhibition walls and another to see artists at work, up close. Jamshedpur residents will soon get to experience the latter.

Acharya Nandalal Bose Art Gallery, on the premises of The Bengal Club in Sakchi, will turn into a studio by November. Art buffs can drop in to see artists make live magic with brushstrokes.

Why the gallery is transforming into a studio where people can visit and check out the creative process for themselves is because city artists fear — perhaps rightly — that the common man feels paintings in exhibitions are exorbitant.

That is why artists will also try to make ‘affordable art’, that is, smaller paintings that priced somewhere in the legion of Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500.

“We have tried hard. We have hosted exhibitions, collaborated with national-level artists to host art camps and hosted sit-and-draw contests for children. But, people are not yet comfortable with the idea of buying art. The studio will let artists work on something that will be beautiful and affordable,” said Shubhendu Biswas, a member of Acharya Nandalal Bose Art Gallery that has organised over 20 group and solo exhibitions in the past four years.

Interested art school students will also be allowed to work and sell their art pieces.

Timings are also getting more people-friendly. The gallery, which used to be open only on weekends from 5pm to 8pm, will have its shutters up everyday.

Members are also taking initiatives to make denizens familiar with visual art. Artists are designing greeting cards that will be sold from the gallery this New Year. With cards priced between Rs 20 and Rs 30, it will be a no-profit, no-loss initiative.

Gallery members have been promoting art in myriad ways. Artists this year had helped design the pandal of Jamshedpur Sarbajanin Durga Puja at Aambagan. The hangar-type pandal got bamboo and terracotta accessories for an arty rustic look.