How did you land your first gallery? Mine took eleven years and one stubborn letter.
I spent eleven years painting before I had a gallery willing to represent me. Not for lack of trying, mind you. I sent portfolios, made appointments, attended openings, did all the proper things. Nothing.
What finally worked was a letter. Not an email, a proper letter on good paper, after a small show of mine got a modest review in a regional paper. I wrote to the director of a small natural-history gallery two states away, enclosed photographs of my actual work, and said I thought we might suit each other. She wrote back within the week. We worked together for thirteen years.
I still wonder whether it was the letter, the timing, or simply that I stopped trying to impress and started stating plainly what I could offer.
How did you land your first gallery? Was it persistence, a lucky introduction, or something you'd never repeat?
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Ah that's a lovely story, the letter. Sure the email's grand for a quick word but there's something about paper, isn't there. Someone has to actually sit down and read it, and they know you sat down and wrote it. It changes the whole weight of the thing.
Mine took a bit under nine years and it wasn't a letter that did it, it was a market stall, would you believe. I'd been carving and printing away in the shed, doing the fairs, and this fella who ran a little gallery down the country came by my table, picked up a hare print, turned it over, put it down, picked it up again. Didn't say much. Sent me an email a fortnight later asking if I'd do a small show. I still don't know what it was about that particular print but I'd shake its hand if I could.
Eleven years is a fierce stretch of holding the line though. I think people give up around year three or four and that's where the real ones are separated out. Fair play to you for staying at it.
A market stall, now that's a proper story. Nine years of carving and printing and standing behind a table in all weather, and it comes down to a man who couldn't put the hare down. There's something honest about that kind of meeting, though. No portfolio, no polite introduction. Just the work itself doing the talking.
I know exactly what you mean about the paper, too. The weight of it is real. I think a letter costs something, and the person reading it can tell. But your way might be the more genuine of the two, frankly. The work gets to speak first, and the talk comes after.
Did he buy the hare in the end, or just the representation?