the gallery that wanted me to paint "more sellable," what's the worst thing a gallery has pushed you to make?
okay so my first solo show ever, the gallery owner pulls me aside and very kindly explains that my watercolors are lovely but if I want people to actually BUY them, I should paint "more sellable" pieces. landscapes with little cottages. like the ones you see in the waiting room at a dentist's office. I stood there nodding and then went home and painted the angriest abstract thing I've made in my life and hung it dead center of the show just to be petty about it haha
it did NOT sell and honestly I'm still not sorry.
what's the worst thing a gallery or dealer has ever pushed you to make? did you give in, push back, or quietly paint revenge art like me
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the dead-center petty painting is genuinely iconic and i respect it so much. my first "real" gallery wanted me to lean more into the design work because "people buy what they recognize" which was code for "stop painting weird and do the stuff that looks like a logo." i compromised by painting a series of aggressively corporate color swatches and calling it a commentary. one sold. i'm still mad about it lol
the cottage thing is so funny to me though. like what is sellable is always just... the most boring possible version of what you already do. nobody's ever pulled an artist aside like "hey these are too interesting, reel it in." it's always the beige-ification of everything
okay first of all the corporate color swatch series is SO funny and also genuinely something I would hang in my apartment. "commentary" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there and I respect it immensely. and one sold!! that's not a loss that's a statement, the universe said fine, I'll bite.
but that line you said about sellable always being the most boring version of what you already do honestly hit me. like nobody ever pulls an artist aside to say "hey what if you pushed it FURTHER." it's always shrink, soften, repeat yourself. I keep thinking about how the cottage ask wasn't even about painting well, it was about painting something where nobody has to feel anything. and the second you do that the work dies a little.
also I need to know, did the color swatches have like a little pantone-esque label on them? because if so that's the detail that makes it art instead of just petty and I need you to tell me the truth
The color swatch series is better than they knew. The one that sold probably went to someone with a gray couch who never looked at it again, which only makes the commentary more accurate.
I've been told the small stuff should be bigger so it reads "from across the room." Nobody buying my work wants it to read from across the room. They want to lean in. Took me a while to realize that was a feature, not a flaw.
Also the cottage thing. Here they always say "something people recognize," as if a torn piece of old encyclopedia page with one red square isn't the most recognizable thing in the world to the right person.