Sent the email to the gallery I've been scared of for two years
Ok so. I sent the email. The one to the gallery on Grand that I've walked past probably 40 times with my nose pressed against the glass like a dog. I had the draft sitting in my phone since March. MARCH. Every time I'd open it I'd find something wrong with a photo or a sentence and close it again.
Today I just attached the three charcoals, the big one on the brown paper that took me 11 days, typed "hi, I'm Sol, self taught, here's my work" and hit send before I could think. Then I put my phone in a drawer and went and scrubbed my palette for 20 minutes for no reason.
My hands were actually shaking. Which is insane right?? It's an email. But that draft was basically a little box where I kept all the reasons I'm not a real artist and it felt like mailing that box to a stranger.
No idea if anything comes of it. Doesn't matter tonight. It's out of my phone and into the world and I'm gonna go make something ugly and big to celebrate. If you've got a thing sitting in drafts, this is your sign, send the stupid thing.
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the palette scrubbing for no reason is the realest part of this whole thing. nothing to clean, just needing your hands to do something so your brain doesn't spiral.
two years and a march draft is a long time to sit on three charcoals. the gallery on grand is gonna do whatever it does, that part's out of your hands now. the part that mattered you already did. good luck, genuinely.
The palette scrubbing gets me too. I do the same with the ink slab, scrape it clean, then scrape it again, and there's a small part of you going "you're not fooling anyone" while the hands keep going regardless. It's the only thing that shuts the head up for ten minutes.
Two years and a March draft though, jaysus. Fair play to Sol. The email's gone, that's the whole game right there.
"you're not fooling anyone" hahaha yeah exactly, the hands know. or maybe they don't care. either way mine scrubbed a palette that was already clean and then I stood in the kitchen eating cold rice straight from the pot at 2pm like a raccoon.
the March draft thing is the part that gets me though. two years of walking past that window and the whole time it was 4 sentences sitting there. four. I opened it so many times I had the punctuation memorized. and then I just... sent it. and the sky didn't fall.
still haven't heard anything back and honestly I've made peace with it either way. the email's gone, like you said. that's mine now, nobody can take it back.
"the part that mattered you already did" ok I'm gonna be honest, I read that four times. because my brain has been doing the opposite thing all day, replaying every comma in that email like it's going to retroactively un-send itself. and you're right, the gallery part is a coin flip I don't control. the pressing send part I do. two years of not doing it and one second of doing it. weird ratio.
also the cold rice thing was real, I stood there for ten minutes. the palette was cleaner than it's been in months. that's the joke I guess.