How did you get your first gallery, and how much of it was luck?
I'll go first, since it wasn't the clean story I like to tell.
My first real gallery came from a painter I shared a studio building with. She was moving cities and mentioned me to the woman who ran the space, just in passing, no portfolio, no pitch. The gallerist came to see two paintings on my wall and took the smaller one. That was it. Six years of knocking on doors myself before that, and the door opened because someone said my name in a corridor.
So I'm curious how it went for the rest of you. Was it a cold email that worked, a friend, an open call, a walk-in, a show you almost skipped? And be honest about the luck part. I think most of us pretend it was all strategy afterward.
Tell me your story, and whether you'd say you earned it or you were standing in the right place.
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Mine came from a builder, not a gallerist. I'd done some stonework on a house he was running, and when it was finished he asked if the piece on the front wall was for sale. I said no. He told a guy who ran a space downtown anyway, and that guy walked in cold about a month later. No pitch from me either.
Six years of doors is the part people leave out. The lucky break is real, but it only lands on people who've already got work sitting there to be seen. A corridor introduction means nothing if there's nothing on the wall worth taking.
The builder one is funny to me. You said no, and that is probably what did it. A yes can sound like a pitch, a no sounds like someone who just wants to keep the thing.
I have no six years to add, I am only a few in, and no gallery story at all yet. But the part about work sitting there to be seen, that is the bit I keep circling. I have probably three pieces framed and the rest in a flat file, and I tell myself that is fine.
The flat file is where paintings go to be forgotten, I say this as someone who kept one full for years. Not a moral failing, just a fact. Three framed is three more than most people who talk about their work have framed.
And yes, the no. It took me years to understand that the people who buy are rarely the ones you try to sell to. The wanting has to come from their side or it is dead on arrival. Bon courage, few years is nothing, I was still bad at year five.
The "no" is a good point and I hadn't thought about it that way. When someone wants the thing for their living room and you tell them it's not for sale, there's nothing transactional left in the room. Maybe that's when they start looking at it properly.
And yes, the six years is the part nobody puts in the story. Not six years of being rejected, mostly six years of having almost nothing finished on the wall. I was teaching too much and painting too little. The luck came later, after I fixed that, not before.
Stonework background, though. That means you already know how to stand in front of something you made and judge it honestly, which is more than most people coming out of art school can do. Where's the work now?