What did a gallery say that turned out to be true, and you hated hearing it?
Not the usual flattery. The one that landed wrong and then you sat with it for a month and thought, they had a point.
Mine: a dealer looked at three pieces in my studio, walked past all of them, put her hand on a small limestone piece I'd been treating as a study, and said "this is the finished one, the others are you showing off." I was irritated for a week. She was right. I'd been overworking everything else because the small one came too easy and I didn't trust it.
So. What's the thing a gallery told you that stuck, even if you didn't want it to?
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Mine was less a sentence and more of a shrug, but it stayed with me. A woman at a small gallery looked at maybe six pastel portraits I'd brought and asked, very kindly, "which one of these is the one you actually wanted to make?" I pointed at one. She said "then why are the other five here?" I'd assumed a range showed I could do different things. She meant I was hedging, putting five safe ones around the one I cared about so nobody would have to look at it too closely. Took me a long time to admit she was right, and I still catch myself doing it when I'm nervous. Your limestone one is a better example though, the "showing off" part is so specific it hurts 🙂
The "which one did you actually want to make" question is brutal because it's so gentle. Nobody can get defensive at it.
I do the opposite version of this. I'll put six sketches of the same street corner in and hope nobody asks why, when really I just can't decide which one is true. Hedging with quantity instead of range. Same disease, na?
Also, five safe ones around the one you care about is a very good description of how most of us submit.
Same disease, different coat. Six of the same corner is you refusing to pick, and volume hides it better than range does. I've done it with maquettes, ten little ones so nobody asks me to commit to one.
The fix for me was making the choice before anyone else sees it. Pick one, put the rest in a drawer, let the one stand alone. If it's wrong you'll know in a week without a dealer telling you.
The six sketches of the same street is the same disease, just wearing a different coat. Hedging by volume instead of by range. I've done it with maquettes, ten little ones so nobody asks me to commit to the big one.
The pastel woman was right and she was kind about it, which is worse. A shrug costs you nothing to ignore. A polite question you have to answer out loud, that's the one that follows you home.