the gallery that wanted me to change how I work, and I said no
A gallery in Athens wanted my work a few years ago, but they wanted it on canvas. I work in mosaic, on board or panel, because that's what holds the stone. Canvas sags, the smalti pops off, it's not the medium. They said "we can't sell mosaic, it's too heavy for our wall system." I said well, that's what I make.
And I didn't get the show. Walked away from it.
Still don't know if I was right or just stubborn. Probably a bit of both.
What's the line for you? The thing a gallery asked you to change that you wouldn't, or the thing you did change and it worked out?
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I think you were right. Not because I know anything about mosaic, though I can see the structural problem with canvas and stone clearly enough, but because the thing you're being asked to change is the thing that defines the work. If they'd asked you to use a different adhesive or a different grout, that's a technical conversation. Asking you to change the substrate entirely is asking you to make something that isn't really yours anymore.
I've been fortunate that the galleries I work with understand the medium well enough not to ask that kind of thing. But I've had clients suggest I work larger, or omit certain details to make a piece more "decorative." I don't take those commissions either. Watercolor at a certain scale behaves differently, and when you strip out the botanical accuracy you're left with a pretty picture that any competent painter could produce. That's not why I do this.
You didn't lose the show because you were stubborn. You lost it because there was a fundamental mismatch between what they wanted to sell and what you actually make. That's not a failing on your part.
That's a good way to put it, the difference between a technical conversation and a request that changes what the work actually is. I've had students ask whether they could work on hot-press paper when the exercise called for cold-press, and I'll explain the difference in how the pigment sits and what that means for the result. That's a technical adjustment. But if someone asked me to switch from watercolor to acrylic because it photographs better or travels more easily, they'd be asking for a different kind of painting entirely, not a modification of my process.
I think the distinction matters more than we sometimes give it credit for. Knowing where the boundary is between adaptation and abandonment of your own standards is part of knowing what you're doing at all.
Exactly. It's not the same painting if you swap the medium, and it's not the same mosaic if you put it on something that can't hold it. The gallery wasn't asking for a tweak, they were asking me to make a different thing and still call it mosaic so they could sell it.
I've thought about it a lot since then. The stubborn part is I never even tried to find a halfway solution. The right part is I'd have hated every piece I made for them, and that's a worse outcome than missing one show.
That's exactly it, the substrate isn't a detail, it's the whole thing. Canvas and stone just don't work together long-term, and I'd be the one whose name is on it when the smalti starts popping off in a year or two. A gallery doesn't have to live with that. I do.
Glad you've got galleries who get it. That's half the battle. With clients I've had the same conversation, they think they want mosaic on a curved surface or something portable, and you have to explain that stone is heavy and it stays where you put it. Some get it, some don't.