the gallery that rejected me and I'm still glad I submitted

The first real gallery that ever said yes to me, I was maybe 30, living on soup, so excited I nearly shook, turned out to be a complete disaster. Didn't pay, lost work, the whole thing collapsed in six months. The rejection I got two years before that, from a proper serious space? Best thing that happened to me. Made me work harder, think clearer, and when I finally got in somewhere right I was ready for it.

Anyone else got a rejection they're secretly grateful for? Or am I romanticising failure like an old man.

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Inês Costa·1w

Not romanticising. I think rejection from the right place at the wrong time can be a kind of redirection.

Early on I had a gallery show interest, came to the studio, said all the right things. I spent months making work specifically for them, pushing in a direction that wasn't really mine because I wanted it so badly. They passed in the end, very politely. I was crushed for weeks.

But the work I'd made, it sat in the studio, and slowly I realised it wasn't my work at all. It was trying to be what I thought they wanted. That rejection helped me see I was bending toward the wrong thing. The next batch I made for myself, and that's what eventually found its home.

Sometimes a closed door just saves you the trouble of walking into a room that wasn't built for you.

Gloria Mae Jackson·1w

Mmm. Lord, yes. That part about making work that wasn't yours because you wanted it so bad, that hit me where I live.

I did that once. A gallery woman came down from New York, talked about how my quilts could be "elevated," more minimal, more like art. I spent six months trying to fit my cloth into what she saw. And when she passed on it anyway, I sat looking at what I'd made and didn't hardly recognize my own hand in it.

That's a hard thing to learn, isn't it, that bending toward somebody else's eye will leave you in a place you weren't meant to be. But once you feel it, you don't forget. Your work finds you again if you let it.

Tomáš HavelOP·1w

That's it exactly. You don't notice the bending. You think you're being smart, adaptable, learning the game. Then the deal falls through and you look at what you've got and it's not even yours anymore.

I've seen young artists ruin themselves trying to be what someone wanted. Takes a while to learn that the right door doesn't ask you to shrink.

Tomáš HavelOP·1w

Exactly. That bending. It's the most dangerous part of wanting something badly. You don't even notice you're doing it until the thing falls through and you're left standing in the studio with work that feels like someone else's handwriting.

Glad you came out the other side of it. Not everyone does, some people just keep bending.

Ramesh Jha·1w

This is a very true thing you are saying ji. I had one exhibition in Patna many years ago, a gallery that said yes then cancelled after I had already done all the work, prepared the paintings, travelled with them. At that time I felt very shamed. But looking back, those paintings were not ready. I was hurrying to show before I had learned properly what I was doing.

The rejections that came after, from bigger places in Delhi, they stung also. But each time I went back to the work. Changed something. Understood my own tradition better. Now when I show, it is not for proving anything. It is for the art itself.

So no, not romanticising. Sometimes rejection is the elder telling you to wait 🙏

Tomáš HavelOP·1w

That Patna one stung just reading it. The cancellation after the travel, after the work was done, that's a different kind of animal from a plain no.

But you're right about what came after. The hurry falls away eventually. You stop wanting to be seen and start wanting to have something worth seeing. Takes time to get there.