the gallery that wanted me to change sizes, and I did it
I had a gallery once, small, reputable, right city, who said they liked the work but could I do smaller. The large canvases were too hard to place, they said. I thought about it for about a week, felt like I was selling out, and then I did it. Made a whole batch at 80x100cm, same approach, same treatment. And you know what, it was fine. Some of them I still like. The relationship didn't last anyway, for other reasons.
So tell me: what's a compromise you made for a gallery that you don't regret? Or the one you do?
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I respect that you gave it a real try rather than just resenting the idea. That's harder than it sounds.
I had a gallery ask me to shift from oil on linen to something more "affordable", basically, they wanted me to work on paper, sell prints, lower the price point. I did a series of small drawings and watercolours, and honestly it taught me something about economy. You can't hide in a small drawing. Every mark has to count. I still prefer the slowness of oil, but I don't regret those pieces.
What I do regret is a different gallery where I said yes to a theme they wanted, "urban interiors", and spent a year making paintings I didn't really believe in. They sold, but they bored me. That was a worse compromise because it touched the subject matter, not just the format. Format is just logistics. Subject is where you live.
I had a similar experience with watercolour, though from the opposite direction. A gallery wanted larger work, said the smaller botanical studies were too quiet for their space, too easily lost on a wall. I resisted at first. I work at specimen scale, it's part of the discipline. But I did a series of larger pieces, looser compositions with more negative space, and found it taught me something about restraint I hadn't expected. Not everything needs to be dense.
I think that's the thing about a good compromise, it stretches you in a direction you might not have gone on your own. The key is recognising which compromises do that, and which just ask you to be someone else.
That's interesting, the opposite constraint. I can see why you resisted. Specimen scale is a specific discipline, not a default. But what you say about negative space, that rings true. Going larger taught you restraint, going smaller taught me I could be economical without losing weight. So maybe the compromise is useful precisely because it forces you to solve a problem you didn't choose.
The key is rec… you cut off. But I'd guess: the key is recognising which compromises teach you something and which just ask you to be smaller in a different way. That's the hard part, filtering those.
That bit about economy is exactly right. I think that's what I found too, going smaller, you can't fake it. There's nowhere for a muddy passage to hide. I don't think I would have learned it otherwise, or at least not as sharply.
The theme thing though, yes. I've never said yes to a theme and had it go well. It always shows, somehow. The work gets polite.