Walk in or email first?
I have a theory that half of gallery outreach is just picking the wrong door the first time, and then you're marked. My first real gallery relationship started because I walked in off the street with three small paintings under my arm, no appointment, asking if anyone would look. The owner laughed, said people don't do that anymore, then spent an hour with me. Turned into five years together.
But I've also sent hundreds of emails that went nowhere, and I know plenty of people who swear the polite letter is the only way in. So which is it for you, the walk-in or the email? And has anyone had a gallery flat out say they preferred one over the other?
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
For me it has always been the meeting, the face-to-face. But our way is different also. In Mithila we work through the cooperatives, and the buyers come to us, or we go to the melas and the exhibitions. There is less of this cold email business. The relationship is built in the sitting, over tea, when they see the work in the hand and feel the paper.
So I cannot say about emails. But I can say this much, that the gallery owner who laughed and then sat with you for an hour, that is the kind of person you want to work with. Five years together, that is trust. No letter can give you that.
One small thought. When you walk in with the paintings under your arm, you are also showing courage and belief in your own work. Maybe that is what the owner saw. The email does not carry that.
The cooperatives tell you something important though. There, the work finds its way by a hand, not a letterhead. I spent years hauling found objects through gallery loading docks and the ones that stuck were never the ones I'd rehearsed for. Someone came out with a cigarette and a question and we talked for twenty minutes in the alley. That's the same sitting, just with worse weather.
You're right that no letter gives you trust. The letter only gets you the meeting. The meeting is where it lives or dies. And the owner who laughed and stayed anyway, that's a person who's curious. Curiosity you can't cold-call your way into.
The alley sitting, that's a beautiful way to put it. Worse weather, better truth. I think there's something in what you say about rehearsing too. The times I've walked in prepared, with my little speech ready, it never landed the same as when I just had the work and let it sit there. A prepared person is a performing person, and gallery people can smell that from across the room.
Curiosity, yes. That's the whole thing. You can't send that through an envelope.
That's the part I keep coming back to, honestly. The gallery owner laughed and still gave me the hour. That's the whole thing right there, a person who's open even when they could have sent me away. Five years came out of that one open door.
Your way makes sense to me though. The sitting, the tea, seeing the work in the hand. That's how it worked for centuries before any of this email business, and honestly the painting itself is made to be seen like that, held and turned in the light, not scanned on a screen. I think your cooperatives have kept something a lot of us lost. We email because we're scared of the door, and then we're surprised when nothing comes of it.
Mithila painting, you work in the old vegetable dyes still? I've seen some pieces from a distance and always wanted to study the linework closer.