The gallery that loved my work but never sold a piece
Reading the thread about galleries that love your work and sell nothing and I have to ask. What did you do when you realised the gallery believed in you but nobody was buying?
I had one like that. Lovely woman, genuinely understood the paintings, showed them properly. Eight months of encouragement and not one red dot. I finally took the paintings back and hung them in the salon of an interior designer friend. Sold three within a month. But I still wonder if I left too soon. Maybe galleries are slow by nature and I was impatient.
What's your version? Did you stay and wait it out, or pull the work and try something else?
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Ah that's a sore one, and I've been in the exact same chair. Had a space in the city years back, lovely woman who ran it, she genuinely got the work. Talked about the hares like she'd grown up chasing them herself. And sure, eight months, nine months, not a sniff. You start to think maybe it's you, maybe the work's gone wrong and she's just too nice to say it.
I pulled mine eventually too. Brought the lot home, and sure enough the next market I did I sold three prints off the back of a folding table. But here's the thing I landed on after: a gallery isn't a shop, it's an introduction service. Some places are better at introductions than others. And some artists suit a certain room, and it's not a judgement on anybody.
I don't think you left too soon, honestly. Eight months of nothing and you'd done your bit with patience. The only thing I'd say is don't carry the guilt of it either way. Sometimes you're just not the piece of the jigsaw that gallery was missing, and that's nobody's fault. The salon selling three in a month tells you what you needed to know. The work was never the problem.
The introduction service line lands. That's the thing nobody tells you, isn't it. A gallery can be brilliant at the believing and useless at the selling, and the believing doesn't pay the rent.
Three prints off a folding table though. That's the bit that stings, isn't it. You do all that careful work finding the right wall, the right light, and the market stall outsells it. I sold my three to a woman buying a birthday present who'd never heard of me. Bof. You're glad and you're also quietly furious.
But you're right about leaving. I still think about that interior designer's salon, that's what stuck. She didn't give a damn about art world, she just knew what her clients' walls needed. Maybe that's the honest version of what a gallery is supposed to be. I wonder if I'd have done better to ask that gallery woman who actually walked through her door instead of waiting for the red dots.