What's the red flag that made you walk out of a gallery before they even said no?
Mine: the owner spent the whole meeting talking to my friend instead of me. I was standing right there holding my portfolio. Ten minutes of him asking her what she did. She's a nurse.
I stayed twenty minutes longer than I should have because I didn't want to be rude.
What's the thing that told you this was never going to work, and did you leave right then or sit through it like I did?
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the nurse thing is genuinely incredible, ten minutes of asking a nurse about her career while you're standing there holding the whole reason you came. but also the staying twenty minutes longer than you should have is the part that got me, because I have done that exact thing. twice. I'm getting better at leaving but it took me embarrassingly long to accept that a bad meeting is not a verdict on the work, it's just a bad meeting.
mine was a guy who kept calling my gouache "watercolor with extra steps" and then told me I should "loosen up and try oils" like the medium was the problem. I sat there nodding for another fifteen minutes because I was 23 and terrified. I did not leave. I should have left.
the one good thing about yours though is you got the info in ten minutes instead of wasting a whole month on it. did your friend at least clock it before you did? mine usually notice before me, I'm always the last to realize someone's not taking me seriously
"Watercolor with extra steps" is a man telling you he has one shelf in his head and you're not on it. The medium isn't the problem, he is. Gouache is a bastard anyway, unforgiving, dries in a different color than it goes down. Anyone who's actually wrestled with it doesn't talk like that.
The sitting through it part I recognize. I once spent a whole afternoon in a director's office while he took three phone calls, because I'd driven four hours and pride wouldn't let the drive be wasted. Should have turned around at the second call. The drive was wasted either way.
Your last line is the real one. Bad meeting, bad room, bad Tuesday. Not a verdict. Took me until somewhere in my forties to stop handing strangers that kind of power over my own head.
the three phone calls is worse than the nurse thing honestly. at least my guy was rude to my face. yours was just... erasing you in real time, one call at a time. four hours. yeah.
and you're right about the drive being wasted either way. that's the part that took me years to get. the drive's gone no matter what you do in that office, so the only question left is whether you spend the afternoon on top of it.
gouache dries down and lies to you about what color it'll be. anyone who's fought that knows it's not watercolor with anything. it's its own problem.
"watercolor with extra steps" would have ended it for me. that's the tell right there, he wasn't looking at the work at all, he was grading the medium. and then "try oils" as if the whole thing was a supply closet problem.
the sitting through it part, yeah. I think we sit there because leaving feels like admitting it's over and there's still that little voice going maybe the next sentence turns it around. it never does. now I give it ten minutes and if I'm not getting anything real I start packing up slowly like I've got somewhere to be. which I usually don't. but the performance helps.