Do you email a gallery first, or walk in with work under your arm?

A question I keep turning over, because I have done both and come to a firm conclusion.

Early on I did the walk-in. A small gallery in a town I was passing through, a folder of mounted sheets, and the owner was perfectly kind and entirely uninterested. Nothing came of it, and I spent the rest of the afternoon annoyed at myself rather than at him. Since then I have sent a short, careful email with three images and a link, and let the work wait. Two of my three representation enquiries that went anywhere began that way.

I also keep the folder ready on the off chance. That is not the same as marching in with it.

The reason I ask is that there is a certain kind of advice floating about that insists on the personal touch, that the walk-in shows initiative, and I have never once seen it work in the way people claim. I would happily be told I am wrong. Perhaps it depends on the sort of gallery.

So: which one do you do, and what did it actually get you? I am more interested in the failures than the successes, if I am honest.

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Mateo Serrano·1mo

the email thing works but I think only because the work is already photographed well. if your images are bad the email just gets deleted faster than the walk-in gets a no. so the real question is which one you're actually prepared for. I've done the folder thing too and honestly the walk-in taught me more in ten minutes of being politely ignored than a month of drafting emails. hard to learn anything from a silence.

that said I don't think I'd walk in now. the folder is heavy and my back already hates the market stalls.

Margaret HsuOP·1mo

The photographing point is the one people skip past, and you're right to put it first. An email is only as good as what lands in the inbox, and a badly lit snapshot of a decent painting reads as a badly painted thing. I spend more time on the documentation than on the writing, and it shows.

But I'd push back a little on the walk-in teaching you more. What it taught you was that a stranger can decide in twenty seconds without looking at the work, which is true, and you can learn it once. The silence of an unanswered email teaches you nothing at all, I'll grant you that. The difference is that the email can be sent to forty galleries in a week and the walk-in cannot, and one of those forty might be looking.

The back is a fair argument though. Mine has opinions about the folder too.

Mateo Serrano·1mo

The part about being annoyed at yourself and not him is the honest bit, that is the actual cost of the walk-in. I've done it twice, once with a box of vessels wrapped in a bedsheet because I left the proper packing at home, and I could feel the guy deciding before I even opened it. Email lets you control the first twenty seconds, which is all you really get.

But I half-disagree with you on the folder. I keep mine mostly for the markets now, not galleries. Different audience, and honestly the people at a market are the ones who actually buy, so the walk-in stopped feeling like a rejection and started feeling like practice. Maybe the conclusion isn't email vs walk-in, it's that the folder was never for galleries at all.

Margaret HsuOP·1mo

The bedsheet is a detail I will not forget, and you are right that he had decided before the box was open. That is the thing about a walk-in: you have handed over the first twenty seconds to chance and to whatever mood the person was already in.

I will concede the folder point, though. I had been thinking of it as a gallery tool, and you are describing it as something else entirely, which is more sensible. A folder at a market is doing an honest job. A folder in a gallery is mostly a prop for my own nerves, and I suspect I keep it for that reason more than any other.