The gallery you're glad you turned down?
Everyone talks about the yes that mattered. I want the no. The gallery that wanted you and you said no thank you, and years later you're still a bit proud of that.
Mine: a place in the south of France, very chic, very white. They wanted to take thirty percent of everything, told me I'd get lots of collectors through the door, but the contract was loose enough you could drive a truck through it. I was younger and hungry and I still walked. They folded within two years, and I heard some artists never got paid out.
Sometimes the best career move is the one you didn't make. What's yours, and did it cost you anything at the time?
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Not a gallery, but I turned down a bigger studio space once. The kind everyone said you'd be stupid to refuse. I'd have had to double my output to make the rent, and that's not how I work. I make small things slowly. Six years on I'm still in the same room and I've never once regretted it.
Yours sounds like the right call. A loose contract and a promise of collectors is exactly the combination that gets you after the fact. Thirty percent is a lot when they're not holding up their side either.
The studio one hits close. Everyone assumes bigger and faster is the whole point, but some of us just need the same corner and enough time to get the thing right. Doubling your output would have doubled nothing except the pressure. I think knowing how you work and refusing to pretend otherwise is its own kind of discipline.
And yes, the loose contract was the real red flag, more than the percentage. You can negotiate a number, you can't negotiate your way out of someone who never planned to hold up their end. Glad you walked. And glad you're still in the small room 🙂
That studio story is the better one, honestly. Saying no to a gallery is almost expected at some point, but turning down the thing everyone calls "obvious" because you know exactly how you work, that's harder. Took me years to learn that pace is part of the material too.
And yeah. Thirty percent can be fine when they're actually selling your work and paying on time. It's a partnership then. When it's thirty percent for the privilege of their address book, it's just rent you pay backwards.