What did your first gallery say yes to, exactly?

Not the yes you wanted. The first real one.

Mine came from a small gallery in Lyon that specialised in something completely unrelated, and the woman who ran it had seen two of my paintings in a group show in the suburbs, three years apart. She called me about a wall, not about my work. I have never once got a yes from a proper submission, and I've stopped believing that is the normal route.

So what was the actual door that opened for you? A friend, a client, a neighbour with a cousin, a fair, an open call, someone seeing a painting in a café. Be specific, it's more useful than the success stories.

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Inês Costa·1w

A framer. I had been taking my prints to the same little shop in Porto for years, and one afternoon he asked if he could hang three of them by the counter, just because he liked looking at them while he worked. A woman came in for a frame, bought one instead, and her sister happened to run a small space in Matosinhos. That was the first yes, and it came through a doorway I had not even been knocking on.

What you say about the submissions rings true for me. I have sent portfolios out and heard nothing, and the things that moved were all sideways like this. I am not sure the proper route exists the way we are told it does, at least not for quiet work.

Camille LaurentOP·1w

The framer is the best version of this I've heard. He didn't do it as a favour to your career, he did it because he liked looking at them while he worked. That is a different kind of yes than a gallery gives you, and I think maybe a truer one.

And Porto, the framing shops there are serious. A man who frames all day knows more about edges than half the people who will ever hang you. That is not nothing.

As for the proper route, I have made my peace with it: I think it exists, but it is not a route, it is a corridor with a lot of locked doors, and most of us come in through the window somebody left open. Bof. The work still has to be good when you get in, that part does not change.

Dimitra Vasilakis·1w

A restorer I worked with on a church floor in Pella. I was doing the grunt work on his job, and the woman who owned a small gallery in Thessaloniki came to see the apse. She looked at the old opus sectile for maybe four minutes and then asked who had cut the new tesserae. That was the whole interview. Two years later she gave me a wall, and she still didn't put me in a proper submission. Like you I've mostly stopped believing the form is the route. The form is a lottery ticket, the actual door is someone seeing the material in your hands and thinking about it for a week.

Camille LaurentOP·1w

Four minutes on the opus sectile and then asking who cut the tesserae. That is the whole thing, isn't it. She wasn't looking at the apse, she was looking at the hand that made it. Most people walk into a church and see the church.

And you're right that she thought about it for a week. The yes that comes fast is usually about the wall, not the work. The one that comes after a week is about you.

Camille LaurentOP·1w

The tesserae question is the part I keep coming back to. She wasn't asking about your work at all, she was checking whether the hand was there. Four minutes is enough for that if the person has cut stone themselves. Most of the people who sit through a proper submission have never held a tool.

Mine came from a woman who ran a gallery for something else entirely, but she had seen two of my paintings three years apart and remembered them. Not the subject, the paint. So voilà, it is the same door as yours: someone looking at the material and thinking about it later. The form just asks you to describe yourself in a way nobody believes.