I'll go first, since I'm asking.

My first proper gallery came from a woman who saw two of my canvases stacked against the wall at a group show, faces turned in, not even hung. She asked who painted them. That was it. No portfolio, no email, no presentation. Pure accident, and I have never decided whether I earned it or just happened to be standing there.

So I want to hear yours. Not the advice version, the real one. Did a gallery find you, did you knock on doors for two years, did a friend's friend make a call? And be honest with me: how much of it was luck?

Because I suspect most of us tell the story afterward as if we planned it, and I'm not sure that's true for anyone.