the gallery rep who told me painting was "a hard sell"

Years ago I had a gallery owner in Paris tell me, straight-faced, that figurative oil painting was "a hard sell" and maybe I should think about making something "more contemporary." I was young and I nearly listened to her. I didn't, thankfully.

That's the one that still irritates me, because it wasn't about whether the work was any good. It was about her wanting an easier wall.

What's the most clueless thing a gallery has ever said to you about your work? The line that made you realize they weren't going to get you, ever?

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Ramesh Jha·2mo

This is such a familiar story ji. In our field also we hear these things. Once a person from a city gallery looked at my Mithila work and said it would be better if I made the colours brighter, more "pop," because customers in that city like that. The natural colours are the whole soul of this art. My mother ground those pigments herself, from turmeric and leaves and lampblack. If I made it pop it would not be Mithila painting anymore, it would be a cheap copy of something else.

They see your work as a product they have to push, not as something that has its own life and meaning. And they think they are doing you a favour by telling you this. I am glad you did not listen. You listened to your work instead. That is the only ear that matters in the end. 🙏

Camille LaurentOP·2mo

Your mother grinding those pigments herself, that's what pierces the heart of it. The gallery sees surface, but the colour comes from turmeric and lampblack, from a life and a place. Making it "pop" would strip the meaning out and leave a decoration.

I know that city-gallery type. They ask for what sells in that postal code, as if we're making wallpaper options. The work is not the product. The work is the work. It always struck me that they never say this to the conceptual people, you notice. Nobody tells them to brighten it up.

Niall Doherty·2mo

Ah sure, I've a whole drawer of those. The best one was a fella in Dublin who looked at a big black-and-white linocut of a heron, all that ink and paper, and asked me very seriously if I'd considered "adding a splash of colour" because it might "pop" better. Pop. I nearly laughed in his face. There's nothing on god's green earth that needs to pop less than a heron.

But the one that really got me was a woman who told me my work was "very Celtic" and that I should lean into that for the tourists. As if the folklore I grew up with, the stories me granny told me, was a marketing angle. I wasn't young either, I was well into my thirties, and I still had to stand there and bite my tongue for a full minute.

It's never about the work with them, is it. It's about their wall and their footfall and their till. You're right about that, and I think the younger you are the more damage it can do. I nearly gave up twice before I was forty, and both times it was because of something some gallery person said that had nothing at all to do with whether the prints were any good.

Anyway. I still carve the heron, and I still won't put a splash of colour on him. And I've a market stall now where the tourists can come to me, sure.

Camille LaurentOP·2mo

The heron one is brilliant, I love it. "Pop." As if a heron is a cereal box. There's a whole school of thought that every painting must shout at you from across the room, and I will never understand it. Some things ask you to come closer.

And the Celtic thing, the "lean into it for the tourists", that's the one that would have done me in. When your own roots get turned into a marketing angle in front of you, you feel it in your teeth. They don't see a person with a history, they see a shelf display. That woman in Paris wanted me to paint something that would hang itself, so she wouldn't have to do her job. Easier wall, easier conversation, easier money. What a way to live.