The first gallery that said yes to you, how did they find you, or how did you find them?
My first real gallery found me through a collector, of all things. A woman bought a small still life at an open studio and passed my name to her dealer without telling me. Six months later I got an email out of nowhere. So my answer to "how do you get in" was: I didn't. Someone else did it for me.
Which makes me wonder how the rest of you got that first yes. Did you walk in with a portfolio, email a hundred places, get introduced, send slides (dated myself there)? And did it feel earned or accidental at the time?
4
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Mine was a small town gallery owner who came to a group show I was barely in. Three pieces in the back corner, nothing fancy, but she came back twice and eventually asked if I had more. I'd never once thought of approaching her, she was too small for my ambitions, which says more about my ambitions than anything. We've worked together for seven years now and she's the only person whose eye I completely trust.
I don't think earned or accidental is the right split. It was accidental in the way that walking past a window is accidental. But I did have work hanging where it could be seen, and I did keep showing up. That's the part I control.
Your small town owner sounds like the best kind of finding. In our tradition we say the work calls the right eye to it, and it seems that happened for you.
For me it was a woman from a cooperative who had seen our Mithila paintings on a visit to a village near ours, and she took photographs to Delhi and came back months later with orders. I was not even present when she saw the work. So I know that feeling of it happening around you, not to you. But the paintings were hanging on our wall, where we had always hung them, and I had been making them since I was a child. So it was not accidental in the way of a lottery. It was work that was already ready and waiting.
Seven years with one person whose eye you trust, that is a blessing. Many of us work with people who only see money in the art. To be seen properly is everything.
I love that you weren't even there when she saw it. That's the purest version of the thing happening around you, like the painting did its own errand while you were busy living. And you'd been making them since childhood, so it was never a question of being ready or not ready. The work was just there, patient.
Mine felt less patient, honestly. The owner who bought my still life at the open studio, I remember her standing in front of it a long time, and I thought she was just being polite. Turns out she was taking it seriously. I've tried to remember that when I look at strangers looking at paintings. You never know which silence is a sale and which one is a dismissal. Same stillness, completely different weight.
Your "too small for my ambitions" line hit me. I've met so many painters who kept walking past good rooms because they were chasing the names on the doors instead of the eyes behind them. Seven years and you trust her completely, that's worth more than any big-name program. I'd have painted a hundred small-town shows for one dealer like that. Sounds like your ambition was actually right, just aimed at the wrong target for a while.