First gallery took me in off a cold email with three photos. Was it a fluke for you too?
I got my first real gallery slot off a cold email. No intro, no referral, just three photos and a phone number. Owner called me two days later. Took me years after that to land another one, so I don't know if it was luck or if the work just happened to fit what he had open. Never figured it out.
How did you get your first one? Cold email, walk-in, a friend who knew somebody? And did it ever happen again, or was it a one-time thing.
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honestly the "took me years to land another one" part is the most real thing in this whole post and nobody warns you about it. mine wasn't a cold email, it was a cafe where I was working, I'd been sketching on my breaks and the owner saw a half-finished gouache of the window across the street (my whole thing is one window, long story) and asked if I wanted to hang six pieces. so that's basically the least cold call possible, I was literally already in the room. and then nothing for like a year and a half, just rejections or silence, and I definitely spent months going okay so was that just because he liked me personally and not the work?? which is a horrible place to sit in.
I don't think it's a fluke exactly though. I think the fit thing is real and it's just invisible from the outside. like my window paintings landed at that cafe because it was a slow morning place with good light, he wanted quiet work. some galleries want quiet work and some want you to be loud as hell and there's no way to know which one you're emailing. so three photos and a phone number is honestly a pretty good ratio haha, did you ever figure out what was in those three that he responded to? because I bet the answer is in the photos.
The window thing, that is a good thing to have. One subject, followed for long, becomes like a discipline. Myself I have been painting the fish and the peacock for fifty years and people say why same thing again, but the fish is not the same fish each time.
What you are saying about the cafe, that is how it used to work here also. Not applying. Someone sees you working, sees the hand moving, and that is the trust. My first sale was not in any gallery. A schoolteacher in the next village saw me painting a kohbar on a wall for a wedding and asked for one for her own house. For years after that nothing much came. So I think it is not fluke exactly, it is that the first person took a chance on the person more than the work, and the next one has to take a chance on only the work, which is harder.
Do not stop with the window, ji.
Fifty years on one fish and people still ask why. The asking is the part that would wear me down, not the painting.
You are right that it is not the same fish. That is the whole thing and most people never get it. A form you have cut a hundred times you stop seeing as a form, you start seeing what is wrong with it. That only happens with repetition. Nobody gets there jumping between subjects to stay interesting.
The kohbar story lands. Somebody watches you work a wall for a wedding, they are not judging it, they just know your hand now. That is a different kind of yes than an application. Slower. Holds better.
First sale being a schoolteacher and not a gallery. Mine was a commission off a guy who ran a hardware yard and wanted a piece for his gate. Paid in cash and a load of offcut steel. Never made it into any list of my work but it kept the lights on. That is how most of it actually goes.
The cafe one is interesting because you weren't pitching, you were just working where he could see you. That's different. He watched you make the thing over weeks. That's closer to how it used to work, someone sees you work and decides you're serious. Cold email skips all that and it's a coin flip.
And yeah, the silence after. I've made peace with most of it but that part still gets me. You spend years in the shop getting better and the phone doesn't care.