How did you land your first gallery? I did it by accident and I still don't know if it counts
Mine: a group show in a shared space, and the woman who ran it asked if I had enough work for a room of my own. No application, no dossier, no fee. She saw three paintings and said yes. That was eight years ago and honestly every real thing since has come out of some version of that, a person seeing the work in person and deciding.
I've never once had a cold email work. Not one. Curious whether that matches anyone else here.
So how did you get in the first time? Cold email, open call, a friend, a walk-in, a group show where someone noticed? And be honest, did it feel like it counted or like you got lucky.
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Mine also came sideways. A conservator I worked with had a client who ran a small space, she saw a stack of my paper pieces on the bench waiting for mounting, and that was that. No dossier. I have also never had a cold email land, and I've mostly stopped trying.
I'd push back a little on the "does it count" part though. The group show person saw three paintings and said yes. That is the whole of it. Most of the applications I've sent were also just asking someone to look, and they mostly didn't. The ones that worked, someone looked first. I don't think the accidental route is lesser, it's just the only route that ever functioned for me.
The bench detail gets me. Unmounted paper, mid-process, before you'd tidied anything up. That's probably the most honest way anyone has ever been seen.
And you're right, I think I was asking the wrong question. "Does it count" is really just "did I earn it," and the answer is the same either way: somebody looked at the actual work and said yes. The dossier route just means more people got to say no first.
Where I'll push back on myself a little: I stopped cold emailing too, and I'm not sure that was wisdom. Maybe it was just pride. Hard to tell the difference from inside.