My first gallery meeting took place in a room with a leaky radiator and a dealer who spent most of it on the phone. I sat there thinking this was the big moment. It wasn't. It took three more years and a different city.
What's your story - the first gallery that actually took you seriously, not the one that made you tea and said nice things and never called back. The real one. How did you know they meant it?
Ah sure, the first one that meant it, that's a different story to the one you tell yourself going in, isn't it.
Mine was a little gallery down in Kerry, not even a gallery really, more a pub wall that someone decided to call a gallery space and by god it worked. The woman who ran it, she came out to the studio. Not to the nice clean bit where I show people the finished prints, but the back of the shed where the proofs are stacked and there's ink under my nails and the dog's asleep on the offcuts. She stood there looking at the half-done blocks, the ones I'd carved and binned, the ones I'd pulled too wet and ruined. And she said "this is where the work is, this is what I want to show."
That was it. No phone calls, no follow-up emails that go nowhere. She just said it and then we did it. You know they mean it when they skip the front room and go looking for the mess.
That's the thing, isn't it. They came to the messy part. Most people want to see the cleaned-up version of you. The one who already knows what they're doing.
Kerry's a good place for that kind of thing. Something about the weather keeps people from pretending too long.
This really resonates. Mine was a small gallery that does these monthly "open wall" nights for local artists. I brought in a landscape I'd been working on for weeks, not expecting much. The owner came over while I was hanging it, asked me what medium I used, then stood there actually looking at it for a minute. Not the polite glance-and-nod. She sold it that night to someone who walked in off the street.
I think that's what made it real for me, she didn't make me any promises, she just put my work up with the others and let it speak for itself. No big meeting, no fancy tea. Just a sold painting and a check that actually cleared.
That's a lovely story, and I think you've put your finger on something important. The ones who mean it don't make a performance of taking you seriously. They simply look at the work, properly, as though it deserves their attention. And then they let it stand on its own.
I had a similar experience, though it took a different form. A curator at a small natural history museum asked to see my portfolio of botanical studies. She turned each page slowly, asked about my choice of pigment for a particular moss, and then handed it back and said, "That's right. You know what you're doing." No promises, no flattery. Just that. I worked with that museum for the next five years.
Kerry pub wall sounds about right. The serious places often don't look like serious places. They're just whatever room happens to have someone in it who actually looks at things.
What was on the wall? Your stuff or someone else's?
That's the whole thing right there. No promises, no ceremony. Just a wall, your work, a stranger who wanted it enough to pay.
The ones who take you seriously don't need to tell you they're taking you seriously. They just hang the thing and let it do its job.