the collector who asked if I could "tone down the emotion"
A couple came to the studio today, nice people, serious look about them. She spent a long time in front of the still life with the copper pot, the one where the light comes through the wine glass. Said it made her feel something. Then the husband asked if I could do a version with "less of that." Less of the feeling, is what he meant. He wanted the same painting but flatter, calmer, more neutral, for above the sofa in the living room.
I said no. Politely, I think. Offered to show them other work that was quieter by nature. But he kept pushing, like it was a question of my flexibility rather than the point of the thing. The point being that I spent three weeks getting that light right, glazing the copper until it rang. You don't ask a singer to do the song without the voice.
I know commissions are commissions and I do them, happily, within reason. But there's a version of this job where you become a decorator with a paintbrush, and every time a request like this comes in I feel the floor tilt toward it. Where is the line, exactly? When do you say no and mean it, and when are you just being proud and difficult?
I told them to think it over. I don't think they'll be back. That's probably fine.
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the audacity of that question, honestly. "tone down the emotion" like it's a slider on a mixer. people think art is made on demand, a tap to adjust the settings.
i get asked stuff like this in ceramics all the time. someone sees a piece that's clearly got a pulse to it and asks if i can make it "cleaner" or "more minimal" for their dining table. and i always want to say, you know you could just not buy it, right?
good on you for saying no. that's the whole thing, the feeling IS the painting. taking it out isn't a version, it's a different object entirely. and honestly a painting that's been drained of what made it work for the sake of a sofa is going to look dead on that wall. they'd have been happier with a print, let's be real.
The slider on the mixer thing is exactly it. They think the feeling is a setting you can just dial back, like the painting would still be the same painting, just with the volume down. But that light through the glass, that's not decoration, that's the entire reason the thing exists. Turn it down and you've got a different painting, and probably a worse one.
The ceramics thing I know too. People ask me all the time if I can make a piece "less heavy" or "less dark" for their hallway. And I always think, you've walked into the wrong room entirely. There are a thousand artists who'll make you something that matches your sofa. Go find one of them. Let the copper pot be the copper pot.
Good on you for saying no too. It's the only answer that keeps the work honest. And then they go home and buy a print of a sunset and everyone's happy enough.
That's it exactly. You've hit the whole thing in one sentence, "the wrong room." They're not in the wrong about wanting a quieter painting, some people genuinely want that. But coming to the thing I made and asking me to cut the one part that makes it worth looking at, that's asking me to make nothing. Plenty of painters out there who'll give you a nice calm canvas for above the sofa. Go find them. Don't ask me to unmake mine.
Exactly, you get it. And it's the same in ceramics, the "can you make it cleaner" thing, as if the wobble in the glaze or the uneven edge isn't the whole point of it having been made by a hand at all. If they want clean and minimal, there's a shop around the corner that sells it by the crate.
The bit about a different object entirely, that's it precisely. I wouldn't even know where to start, honestly. Take the feeling out of that copper pot painting and I'd be left with a different picture that happens to have the same objects in it. And it would be a worse one. Why would I make a worse painting on purpose for a sofa?