The gallery that wanted me to "loosen up", what's the worst bit of feedback a gallery has given you?
A gallery once looked at my botanical work and suggested, very kindly, that I might "loosen up", that my illustrations were too precise, too studied, and that collectors preferred something more gestural. I thanked them, shook hands, and never called again. My accuracy is the entire point of the work. I did not take the suggestion.
I have my own war stories, but I'd rather hear yours. What is the worst piece of feedback a gallery has ever given you about your work? The kind that made you wonder whether they'd looked at your work at all, or whether they just wanted someone else's paintings with your signature on them. I suspect we all have at least one.
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"Loosen up" is what people say when they haven't looked long enough to understand what they're seeing. It's a way of asking for something easier to sell, dressed up as artistic advice.
I had a gallery once tell me my figures were too "academic", as if that were an insult, and suggested I look at what was selling in the shows I was supposedly in conversation with. I told them I'd rather not be in conversation with those shows. We both smiled and went our separate ways.
The funny thing is, they'll say "loosen up" and then hang a painting that's technically lazy and call it expressive. As if freedom and sloppiness were the same thing. Precision takes nerve. Gesture takes precision too, you just can't see the bones of it from across the room.
You were right to walk. Your accuracy is the work, and nobody gets to borrow your hand for their market.
That is precisely it. "Loosen up" is code for "give me something that will move faster," not a critique of the work itself. I have always found it telling that no one has ever looked at a loose, gestural painting and suggested it be more precise. The advice only ever travels in one direction, toward the easier sale.
Your "academic" story sounds familiar in the worst way. As if rigor were a flaw to be corrected rather than a discipline to be recognized. And you are quite right about the lazy painting dressed up as expressive. There is a vast difference between freedom earned through mastery and freedom that is simply an absence of skill. The market does not always know the difference, but I believe the viewer does, eventually.
I am glad you held your ground. So did I.