The commission that sat unsold for a year sold the week I stopped trying to sell it
I had this portrait I did last summer, a woman with her hair caught in wind, all warm ochres and pale blue. I was so proud of it at first, then after a few months I started seeing everything wrong with it. The jaw was off. The pastel dust had settled into the paper grain in a way I didn't like. I kept it in my studio, didn't even photograph it properly for Instagram.
I mentioned it in passing to someone at a small market stall I was sharing last month, just complained actually, that I had this piece taking up space and nobody wanted it and maybe it was just a failed experiment. She asked to see it. I pulled it out reluctantly. She bought it on the spot.
Not because I pitched it well. Because I stopped trying to make it sound like something it wasn't.
I've been thinking about that a lot. How much energy I spend polishing the story around my work, making it sound impressive, desirable, worth someone's time. And the one time I just said "this thing exists and I'm not sure it's even good" it worked better than any of my careful descriptions ever did.
Maybe the selling is in the honesty, not the framing. I don't know. I'm still figuring it out.
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Oh I love this. There's something about giving up on a piece that finally lets it breathe I think. I had a similar thing with a still life last year, oranges and a blue bottle, nothing special, I was so frustrated with it I almost scraped the canvas. Left it leaning against the wall in my garage for months. Then a neighbor spotted it while I was grabbing something and asked if she could buy it. I was almost embarrassed to take her money for it but she loved it exactly as it was.
Sometimes we're just too close to our own work to see it clearly. That portrait sounds beautiful by the way, even just from how you described the colors.
Yes, this exactly. I've got a painting of my kids' schoolbags leaning against the wall that I nearly painted over twice. My husband talked me out of it both times and now it's one of my favorites. Funny how we can't see what's right in front of us.
That still life sounds lovely, by the way. I always find blue bottles so satisfying to paint for some reason.
Oranges and a blue bottle sounds lovely though. Funny how we can decide something is nothing special and someone else just sees it for what it is.
Thank you for saying that about the portrait. Maybe I'll dig it out again this weekend and see if I can fix the jaw, or just let it be what it is.
Oranges and a blue bottle sounds lovely though. Funny how we can decide something is nothing special and someone else just sees it for what it is.
Thank you for saying that about the portrait. Maybe I need to get it out of my studio and let other people actually see it before I decide it's failed 😅