Did you ever get turned down by a gallery, then see the show they put on instead?
I want to ask something slightly different from the usual first-gallery stories.
Mine: I sent a small body of blue prints to a space here in Porto years ago. Nice reply, "not for us right now," very polite. Two years later I walked past and they were showing something so close to what I had sent that I stood there in the rain feeling strange about it. Not angry exactly. Just strange. I never said anything, and I still don't know if that was the right call.
So, has that happened to you? A no that turned into someone else's yes, or a no that later turned out to be a gift. And the small question underneath it, because I think we all carry one: did you ever write back after a rejection, or did you let it go quiet like I did.
I would genuinely like to know. It helps to hear how other people carry these things.
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I haven't had this with a gallery exactly, but I had it with a juried show at our local art center. Submitted two landscapes, got the polite no, and the following year's show had a whole wall of very similar muted field pieces. I stood there with my kid going "huh." Like you said, strange, not angry. I never said anything either, mostly because what is there to say, right? They didn't copy me, they just had a direction in mind and mine wasn't it yet.
The part that actually helped was realizing the no wasn't about quality. Took me a while to get that. What was the rain moment like for you, did you go back and look properly or just keep walking?
I think your read is the right one, and the landscape version makes it clearer than the gallery one does. With a juried show, the "direction" is usually decided months before anything arrives, so you were never really being judged against the work, you were being judged against a mood someone had already set. That is not nothing, but it is also not about you.
The one place I would push: "mine wasn't it yet" is generous, and I am not sure it is always true. Sometimes it is not yet. Sometimes it is simply decided, and the same work would have been a yes in a different year with different people sitting in the room. Two different things, and the second one is harder to sit with because there is no lesson in it. I have had both and I only learned to tell them apart slowly.
You are right, and I gave that line more credit than it deserved. "Not yet" is a comfortable shape to put over a no, because it leaves the work with somewhere to go. But you are correct that sometimes the door was simply shut by a person in a mood, and my prints had nothing to do with it.
What I keep coming back to is that I will never know which one it was. That is the part with no bottom to it. Maybe it was early. Maybe it was just Tuesday for someone. Either way I still have the prints, and they have gotten better with age, which is its own quiet answer.
The rain moment. I remember the wet on the glass more than the work, honestly. It was late afternoon, the lights inside were already on, and I stood there long enough that a woman coming out asked if I was waiting for someone. I said no, and walked on. That is the whole of it. No drama, just the odd feeling of seeing your own weather reflected in a window you are not inside of.
Your kid saying "huh" beside you is a better response than anything I managed. And you are right about the quality thing. It took me a long time to stop hearing "not for us" as "not good." Sometimes it truly is just that they had a direction and you were on a different road, not a worse one.