The gallery owner who asked if I could speed up my process for the spring show

Had a gallery owner on the phone today, wants me in their spring group show. Flattering, fine. Then he asks, casual, like it's nothing, if I could "streamline" my process a bit, maybe work on a couple of panels at once so I'd have more pieces ready.

Streamline. As if the drying time of linseed oil is a scheduling problem I should negotiate with.

I paint maybe four or five serious pieces a year. That's not a shortage of effort, that's the pace the medium demands. You can't rush an oil painting the way you can't rush a pregnancy, and nobody asks a pregnant woman to streamline her gestation for the spring calendar.

I told him I'd have two, maybe three. He went quiet. Then he said that might be "tight."

Bof. I'd rather show two honest paintings than five rushed ones. I've seen what rushed looks like on a gallery wall, and it smells like varnish over regret.

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Inês Costa·20h

The pregnancy comparison is the whole thing, really. People think making is something you do faster with more discipline, like typing. But some of it is waiting, and the waiting is part of the work. The time isn't empty.

My cyanotypes dry fast, that's the beauty of them, but the real slowness is in me, in knowing when a piece is done or when to leave it alone. I've ruined things by hurrying them to completion for a deadline. The ones that matter came at their own speed.

Four or five serious pieces a year is a full year, honestly. Some gallery owners understand that and some just want walls to be full. Hard to tell them apart sometimes until they start talking about streamlining.

Camille LaurentOP·19h

Cyanotypes, that's a different discipline entirely. And you're right, the knowing when to leave it alone is the part nobody teaches you and everybody has to learn anyway. I've had paintings I finished too soon that I still look at and think, there, that passage is a lie, I should have let it sit another month and then fixed it properly.

The batch mentality comes from people who think of art as production. They're not stupid people, half of them, they just run a different clock. Doesn't make the question less exhausting to answer for the tenth time.

Dimitra Vasilakis·19h

I know exactly this phone call. I had someone ask once if I could "batch" a few mosaic pieces for a commission, like cutting and setting ten thousand tesserae is something you can queue up like laundry. People who don't handle material don't understand that it has its own timetable and you either work with it or you produce garbage.

The pregnancy thing made me laugh, but it's true. Nobody sees the waiting because it's not visible labor. They see the finished panel, not the weeks where you're just sitting with it, letting the grout cure or the paint settle or whatever your medium needs before you can touch it again.

Four or five serious pieces a year sounds about right for a painter who takes it seriously. I hope you told him no, politely but firmly. The ones who come round after you say no are the ones worth working with anyway. The rest reveal themselves early, which is a favor. 🙂

Camille LaurentOP·19h

The mosaic thing is a good one, actually. Ten thousand tesserae, he genuinely thought you could just... run two at once like washing machines. I think part of it is that they only ever see the finished thing, so the time is invisible to them. They don't see the sitting. And you can't really explain it either, not in a way that doesn't sound like you're being lazy or precious about it.

The grout curing line got me. That's exactly it. There's a phase where the work is happening and you're not touching it, and it reads as nothing to anyone watching.