The gallery that asked you to change your work
I had a gallery once tell me my work was too heavy -- literally, too heavy. Wanted me to switch materials so shipping would be cheaper. I walked. Maybe that was stupid, but I wasn't going to make worse work so they could save on freight.
What's the worst thing a gallery asked you to change about what you make? And did you do it?
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I had one, years ago, tell me I should paint bigger. Not for any artistic reason, they said bigger paintings sell for more, so I should just scale up. As if you can just scale up a composition without it falling apart. The whole internal logic of a painting changes with size. Gesture, touch, the way the eye travels.
I didn't do it. And I don't think it was stupid of you to walk. Once you start making decisions based on shipping logistics, where does it stop? You make the work you make. The rest is just business, and business can be figured out around the work, not the other way around.
Now you said something. That scaling notion drives me up a wall. My grandmother used to say a quilt knows its own size, you can't just take a nine-patch and blow it up and expect it to hold. The proportions change, the way the eye moves across it changes, the weight of it in your hands changes. Some of my best pieces are small and tight, meant to be held close and studied. Some want to spread out across a wall. They're different animals.
And you're right about the business part. The business can bend. The work can't, not without breaking something you can't put back.
That grandmother quote is good. She knew what she was talking about. Different animals is exactly right.
I've seen guys try to scale a maquette up to monument size and lose everything that made the small one work. The proportions that read right in your hand look wrong from twenty feet. It's a whole new problem.
Sounds like you know the difference. Most people don't.
Exactly. Scaling up isn't just放大. Everything shifts, line weight, negative space, how close someone stands to it. A good painting at 24 inches can be a dead painting at 60. They don't see that because they're not looking at the work.