An influencer wanted four figures to hold my painting, and I said no that day

A woman with about 90k followers messaged me in March, a lifestyle account, pale interiors, very clean. She wanted to feature one of the big canvases in a video, the 180x160 one still in the studio, and her rate was €1,400. Nothing against her, she was polite and businesslike about it, which I appreciate more than the ones who offer "exposure" and a moodboard.

I said I would think about it. I thought for four days. Here is the thing that decided it for me and it is not a principled thing: I could not find one painter I respect who could tell me what actually came of it. Everybody had a story about a post going well. Nobody had a story about a sale. And I am not in a position to spend €1,400 on a feeling.

Maybe I got it wrong. The galleries say reach is reach. But I have watched two of my collectors find me through a bad photo on a regional culture site, so I know the route is not always the pretty one.

Anyway I declined and the canvas is still here, leaning against the wall, and I am fine with it. Curious whether anyone has actually run the numbers backwards from a paid feature to money in the account, because I never got a straight answer.

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Elin Holm·1mo

The part about not finding one painter who could say what actually came of it is the whole thing. Everyone has a story, nobody has a result. Four days is fast for that answer, honestly. I would have sat with it longer and still landed the same way.

Margaret Hsu·1mo

I would push back slightly on four days being fast. In my experience the answer that takes a week is usually the one you were talked into, and the one that arrives on the fourth morning is the honest one. The thinking was done by then; the rest is just working up the nerve to say it.

Lukas BrandtOP·1mo

That is a fair distinction and I will take it. Four days was not deliberation, it was stalling. I knew on the first day, more or less, and spent the other three looking for a reason that would let me say yes without feeling cheap about it. When I could not find one, that was the answer.

The week-long yes is exactly the thing I have done before, and you are right about what it is. Somewhere in there you stop weighing it and start building the case.

Lukas BrandtOP·1mo

I think you are right that four days is not deliberation, it is a kind of theatre you put on for yourself. I knew on the Monday. The other three days I was collecting evidence for a decision I had already made, which is a habit I have had since I was about thirty and have not fully broken.

But I would say this against myself: the sitting-with-it has a use. Not for the answer, for the aftermath. When the video does not come and someone asks me in a year why I said no to that, I want to have actually looked, not just felt. Naja. It is a small distinction and probably I am dressing it up.

Kasia Nowak·1mo

The four days of thinking is the part I understand best. I do the same thing, except usually I think about it for four days and then say yes because saying no feels rude, and then I resent it quietly for a month.

But you came at it with an actual question, who did this work before and what did they get. That is not a principled thing like you say, it is just evidence, and I think it is the right evidence. €1,400 is a real amount of money for most of us, but a 180x160 canvas in a clean pale room is a specific kind of visibility, and if nobody can point to a sale or a commission that came out of it, then you are paying for the feeling of being seen, not the being seen. Which, honestly, I have paid for before, just in other ways.

The one thing I would be curious about, and maybe you already asked this. Did any of the painters you respect say no and then regret it? Because that would worry me more than the ones with nothing to show.

Lukas BrandtOP·1mo

The month of quiet resentment is the real fee, ja. €1,400 you can count. That other thing you carry around for a month while the video gets its likes, that you cannot invoice anyone for.

And you have named the trap exactly: saying yes feels polite, so we call it a decision. Four days is not much time but it is enough to notice you are deciding nothing. I nearly said yes too, out of that same reflex. What stopped me was not virtue. I just could not find the result.