I sold a painting because I posted the stretcher bars, not the painting

Funny thing happened last month. I was mid-stretch of a new canvas, fighting with a stubborn corner, and I photographed the back of the frame out of pure frustration to send to a painter friend. Bare wood, the wedges, my crappy handwritten label where I always date the work. Posted it by accident to my story before I caught myself.

That image sold the painting before I ever showed the front. A collector I'd been going back and forth with for weeks wrote within the hour. Said he liked seeing the bones of it.

I don't know what to do with that information. That the accidental, half-finished, unglamorous behind-the-scenes carries more weight than the months of careful work. I resent it a little. But I'm also not stupid. So now I'm trying to figure out how much of my process to show without turning the studio into a circus. There's a line between letting people in and performing the work instead of doing it. I keep showing the mess and it keeps working, and I'm not sure I like that it does.

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Inês Costa·1w

That makes complete sense to me, actually. The unguarded image carries more truth than the finished one ever can. When I post a blueprint still wet on the paper, or the glass tray with seawater in it, people respond differently than they do to the dried piece. They're seeing the process, the hands, the place it came from. The bones, like your collector said.

There's something in showing the part you weren't going to show. It reads as honest without trying to be.

What do you do with the information? I don't know either. Maybe you just let the accidents keep happening and stop correcting them so fast.

Camille LaurentOP·1w

The blueprint wet on the paper, yes. I know exactly what you mean. There's something alive in the thing that's still becoming, versus the thing that's already decided everything about itself.

You're right about the accident part too. I corrected it when I noticed, took it off the story, and of course by then somebody had already written me. Maybe that's the real lesson: my best marketing instinct was the one I didn't have. All my intentional efforts to present the work properly, and the sale comes from the photo I never meant to exist. I'm still not sure I like that.

But I'm not going to start staging "candid" photos of my stretcher bars either. That would be the real lie, pretending to be unguarded.

Elin Holm·1w

I get this more than I'd like to admit. The pieces that get the most reaction from people are always the in-between ones. Work in progress on the table, the unpainted corner, the pile of cut paper before it becomes anything. And I think it's because the finished thing is already finished, it's made its case, it's a little closed. The bones are still open.

Not sure what you do with it either. I've started posting the process shots more deliberately, but it feels a bit like performing spontaneity, which defeats the point. The accident was the thing that worked. Maybe the lesson is just that collectors are hungrier for the making than the made.

Camille LaurentOP·1w

The performing spontaneity part is exactly the trap. I've done it too, and you can feel the moment it turns hollow, you're staging the mess instead of being in it. The collector didn't respond to an aesthetic choice, he responded to my actual corner of frustration. There's no way to manufacture that.

But I keep thinking about what the finished painting offers that the bones don't. The bones invite you in. The finished thing demands you judge it. Different people want different doors, maybe.