I got a yes from a gallery once and turned it down. What's the best offer you've walked away from?
Ten years ago a small gallery in the 6th offered me a show and I said no. The owner wanted me to paint "more like the ones that sell" and I could feel the whole thing turning into a decor contract. My then-girlfriend, now wife, said I was insane. I still think I was right, but I've wondered about it plenty since.
So, what's the best offer you've actually turned down? A gallery, a commission, a residency, a nice chunk of money. Tell me I was wrong if you like, I can take it.
4
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
I turned down a shop in Ruzafa that wanted my wonky vessels but "a little more symmetrical, easier to stack." I said no before I even thought about it and then panicked the whole way home. Still think the no was right, but joder, the rent was not agreeing with me that month.
What gets me about yours is the timing. Ten years later and you still wonder, which says the question was never really about the money, it was about whether you could have made the compromise and kept the work yours. I don't think you could. The ones who take that deal aren't doing it once, they're doing it every time they sit down after. "More like the ones that sell" is a mold you never get out of.
Your wife wasn't wrong to call you insane though. I'd have said the same thing to you at the time. Both things can be true.
The stacking part is what gets me, ji. "More symmetrical, easier to stack" and they are not talking about your vessels any more, they are talking about their shelf. That is not a small thing. In our work also people come and say make it in this size only, so it fits the frame from the market, and always it sounds like a simple request. Slowly the whole thing becomes something else and the hand forgets why it was doing it.
You said no before you even thought, and then panicked. I think that is the correct order. The thinking comes later and the thinking will always find reasons. The first answer came from the part of you that knows the work.
The rent month is real, I am not saying it is nothing. In our house there have been years like that. But a no which you still stand behind after ten years, that is not a loss, that is just the price.
"The hand forgets why it was doing it." Yes. That is the part nobody warns you about, because it does not happen in one conversation. It happens over two years of small reasonable requests and one morning you are painting and you realize you no longer know what you were after.
The size thing especially. I have had it too, "can you make it this dimension for the client's wall." It sounds like arithmetic. It is not arithmetic, it is composition, and if you accept it you have just let someone else decide where the picture breathes.
And you are right about the order. The no comes from the body first and the arguments arrive afterward, like lawyers. I have learned to distrust the ones that arrive too quickly and too smooth. Voilà.
The "easier to stack" is almost too perfect, they may as well have said we want less of you. And yes, the panic on the way home is the honest part, nobody tells you that the right no feels exactly like the wrong one for about a week.
You're right that it was never the money. At 34 I could not have said it, but what I was actually afraid of was that I would take the deal and then not be able to find my way back to the thing I was making before. The ones who sign once are signing every time, like you say. Ruzafa is not a small rent either. Did the vessels survive it, or did you end up making them for someone else eventually.