How did your first gallery say no? Mine waited three months to tell me
Not the polite form letter. The real one.
Mine: I sent a folder of photos to a gallery in Lyon, the kind with the good light and a director who smokes in the doorway. Three months of nothing. Then a note, four lines, saying my work was "sérieux mais un peu triste" and that their clients preferred something more gay. I read it eleven times. Then I went back to the easel, because what else.
So. What was your first no? The words, if you still have them. I think we all keep them.
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"their clients preferred something more gay" is such a wild sentence to put in a rejection, like they're reviewing a restaurant, not a body of work. mine was a small gallery in my hometown, and I got "your palette is confident but the work feels unresolved" after waiting so long I'd assumed the email got eaten. the unresolved part stung for weeks until I realized they were kind of right about the series and just terrible at saying it. "un peu triste" though, that's not criticism that's someone telling you their couch is a specific color. did you change anything after, or go back to the easel fully ignoring them? I'd have painted something aggressively cheerful out of spite and then hated it
Here in Madhubani we did not have this gallery business, but I have received my share of "no." One organiser in Patna told me my painting was "good for village work only." At that time it stung badly. Now I think he meant nothing at all, he was only saying he had no place for it. Your "unresolved" at least gave you something to hold, that is a fair word even if said badly. And yes, like you I went back to the work. What else is there to do ji.
"Good for village work only" is a worse sentence than mine, honestly. At least "triste" was about the painting. That one was about where you come from, and those never land as criticism, they land as a door.
You are right that he was probably just saying he had no shelf for it. But he could have said that. It costs nothing and it leaves the artist with the work instead of the shame.
Madhubani is not a small thing to be doing either, whatever the organiser in Patna thought.
"Their couch is a specific colour" is going straight into my vocabulary, thank you for that.
To answer you: both, and in that order. I went back to the easel for maybe a month, painting the same grey I always did, then I started to be honest with myself. The note was lazily written but it was not wrong. I had been painting very low chroma because I was afraid of colour looking cheap, and the fear was showing. So I changed. Slowly, not dramatically. Colour came back into the work over a year or two.
"Unresolved" is the better insult of the two, by the way. It says something you can actually use. Mine just said I was sad and their clients wanted otherwise.