What did the gallery ask you to change, and did you do it?

I will start. A dealer once asked me to paint a specimen considerably larger than life, in a stronger red than the plant actually is, because "the wall needs heat." I declined and lost the show, and I would decline again, though I confess I thought about it for a week.

So: what has a gallery or curator asked you to alter? Size, palette, framing, subject, a background that isn't there in nature. Did you hold your ground or give in, and how did it turn out either way? I'm genuinely interested in where people draw the line, and whether anyone has changed a piece and been glad they did.

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Mateo Serrano·3w

Not a gallery yet, more a market, but a woman once asked me to remake a vase because the crackle glaze looked "broken" and she wanted it smooth and shiny. I said no. That crackle is the whole reason the piece exists, it's the kiln deciding things for me and I just get to sign it. She bought a different one, plain white, everyone happy.

The one I still think about: a small shop wanted my face pieces but without the faces. Just the forms. I almost said yes because the money was real and I had a kiln repair coming. Then I pictured handing over a bunch of blank heads and felt sick, so I said no and ate rice that month. No regrets.

The line for me is when the change makes the piece lie about itself. Size, palette, I can play with those, that's just talking. But if the thing stops being the thing I made, what am I even selling. Your red plant, if red was the lie and the wall wanted heat, she could have bought heat from someone else.

Lukas Brandt·3w

The blank heads are the real story here. A dealer asked me once to cut two metres off a canvas because the ceiling in her client's hallway was low. Not repaint it, just make it a different painting that fit the wall. I said no, and I have wondered since whether I was being principled or just stubborn about a number.

But your version is worse, because a face piece without the faces is not a smaller version of the same thing. It is a different object that happens to carry your name, and that is the part I would not be able to live with. The crackle woman I understand. She wanted shiny, she bought shiny. That is just taste, not a request to undo you.

Margaret HsuOP·3w

Two metres off the canvas is not a number, though. It is a composition. Whatever you had arranged in that length is gone, and what remains is a different picture wearing the same title, so I think you were being principled whether you meant to be or not. The stubbornness and the principle tend to arrive together and you only find out afterwards which one it was.

I keep coming back to your phrase, "a different object that happens to carry your name." That is exactly it, and it is the part that would keep me up at night. A painting I would not defend is still a painting I signed.

You are right about the red, incidentally. A stronger red would have been easy, alizarin pushed further than the specimen ever went. That is what made it tempting and what made it dishonest. Accuracy is not a limitation I am working around. It is the whole argument of the piece.

Margaret HsuOP·3w

The crackle glaze refusal I understand completely. Asking a potter to remove the crackle is asking them to undo the one thing the firing did that they could not have planned, and there is no version of that piece left afterward.

The blank heads are the harder story, though. You were right, and I suspect you knew it before you wrote it out. The money is always the sharpest argument, because it arrives attached to something real, a kiln repair, a roof, next month. I have never regretted a refusal for the sake of the work. I have regretted the ones I talked myself into.

Kasia Nowak·3w

Not a gallery, but a portrait client once asked me to make her jaw narrower and warm up the whole skin tone "like the photos on my phone." I did the jaw, small change, fine. The skin I refused and I think I lost the commission over it. Her face had this lovely cool pink in the shadows and I could not bring myself to kill it. Still not sure that was principle or just stubbornness.

The size thing is interesting though. I was asked once to blow a head up much bigger than my comfort and I hated every centimetre of it while making it, then saw it hung and it actually breathed better at that scale. So sometimes giving in teaches you something. The red for "heat" is different, that is just decorating, not your work anymore.

Margaret HsuOP·3w

The jaw was the honest part, I think. Narrowing it costs you almost nothing and she has to live in that face, so fine. But you cannot repaint the light somebody was actually standing in because a phone camera flattened it into something warmer. Phone skin is a lie of the sensor, not a likeness. I would have refused the same and slept perfectly.

Principle or stubbornness, though. I have decided the two are close enough relatives that I no longer try to separate them. The test I use now is whether I would still defend the decision in a year with the money gone. Usually I would.

Your last point is the one that nags at me. I have twice been pushed past my natural scale and both times it was the hanging that taught me, not the painting of it. There is a certain size at which a thing stops being a specimen and becomes a presence, and you cannot see it on the easel. I do wonder how much of my refusals over the years were judgment and how much was simply working at the only size I had taught myself to see.