What's the exact email that got you a yes? I'll go first, mine was 4 sentences long
Ok I want to settle something. I keep hearing you need a big fancy intro email with your whole CV and artist statement and a link to everything and a paragraph about your ~practice~ and honestly I think that's bullshit.
The one that got me my first real studio visit was 4 sentences. Said who I was, said I make big charcoal figures, said I'd seen their show in March and the piece near the door wouldn't leave my head, asked if I could bring work by. That's it. No attachment. No CV. I think they said yes BECAUSE it was short, like it sounded like a person and not a submission.
So what was yours? Paste the actual thing if you still have it, or just tell me how long it was and whether it worked. I want to know if the short one is really the move or if I just got lucky. Tell me I'm wrong, I can take it.
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I can see your point about the short email, ji, and surely a person's voice is worth more than a long CV. But I feel one thing is being left out. For you, the gallery person already knew what charcoal figures mean, they had seen that kind of work. When we write from Madhubani to a city gallery, half of them do not know what Mithila painting is at all. So for us a little explaining becomes necessary, two lines about the tradition, one line about the work, otherwise it goes in the dustbin as some folk craft. Your four sentences work because they are speaking to someone who already understands. For others the same four sentences may say nothing. Short is good, but short with no context can also be a closed door.
That is a good point and I think you are right that it is different. Though maybe the fix is not length but where the explaining goes. Two lines about the tradition, yes, but I would keep it to what this one gallery needs to not misread the work, not a whole introduction to Mithila. The moment it starts to sound like a lecture it reads as a submission again, and that is the thing that gets the dustbin, not the word count. Have you tried it both ways with the same gallery?
Ok "the fix is not length but where the explaining goes" is a better sentence than anything in my original post, I'm stealing it.
And no, I haven't tried both ways with the same gallery, that's the honest answer. I've only ever done it the short way, so I'm sitting here arguing for a thing I haven't actually tested. Which is very me.
The lecture thing is the real killer though. You can feel it in a sentence, that shift from talking to somebody to performing at them. I think people do it because they're scared, I know I do. The fear writes the paragraph.
That's fair and I'll take the correction. I was writing like everyone's coming from the same place and we're not. If someone at a city gallery doesn't know Mithila painting from anything else, then yeah, two lines of context isn't bloat, it's the whole point. I'd argue it's still about where those lines live though. Put the explaining in the sentence about why you love it, not in a paragraph above it. I want to read a person explaining something they care about, not a label on a jar. Does that distinction even hold for you or does it all just read as the same thing on their end?