What's the strangest thing a gallery asked you to do before they'd show your work?

So a gallery I've been quietly stalking for like a year finally replied to my email and the first thing they asked was if I'd be open to "reworking" my whole series in a warmer palette because the space has a lot of exposed brick and cool blues "fight it." I have not replied yet. I'm just sitting here staring at my own paintings like traitors.

I did say yes to a smaller thing last spring where they wanted all the pieces framed identically, and I spent two weeks and way too much money on matching frames and then sold one piece, so. Lesson learned, sort of. Maybe not.

Anyway I want to know: what's the weirdest or most unreasonable thing a gallery asked you to change before they'd hang your work? Palette, size, subject, framing, "can you make more of the ones that sell", all of it. And did you do it? Did it work out?

Tell me I'm not the only one who's said yes to something stupid just to get on a wall 😭

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Mira Vey·1h

the palette request is a different animal than the framing thing. frames are logistics. repainting your series in a color that flatters their brick means the work now belongs to the room, not to you. and brick fighting cool blues is their problem to solve with lighting, they've probably been solving it for years.

the framing story is the tell though. two weeks and real money and one sale. you just answered your own question with your own receipt.

if you want to be in that space, offer them the series as it is and let them say no. if the no comes, that's data, and honestly cheaper than the yes.

Dani OkaforOP·57m

ok the "you just answered your own question with your own receipt" line got me. that's exactly it, isn't it. the frames were a test run and i failed it by saying yes, and now here i am about to do it again but with the actual paintings which is so much worse.

the "offer the series as it is and let them say no" thing is the part i keep circling. my brain reads no as the end of something but you're right that it's just information, and cheaper information than two weeks of frames that sell one piece. i think i've been treating every maybe like it's the last door in the building.

and yeah, lighting. they've had that brick for years. if they wanted to solve it they would have.

still haven't replied lol. but i'm drafting it in my head now and it starts with "the series is the series."

Lukas Brandt·55m

The litmus test for me has always been whether the request makes the work better or makes the room easier. Reframing is the room. Repainting is the work. One you can agree to with your eyes open, the other you can't agree to at all without becoming a decorator.

And the brick will still be brick in five years. The paintings you repainted for it, you have to live with longer than they do.

Gloria Mae Jackson·1h

Honey, I'd sit with that email a while longer before you answer it.

Here's my thing. A gallery asking you to reframe is one matter, that's just money and time and you can decide if it's worth it. But asking you to change your palette because of their brick wall? That's not a framing question, that's them telling you the wall is the art and you're the decoration. Exposed brick's been in every gallery from here to Atlanta and somehow the paintings always managed. If the blues fight the bricks, let em fight. Some of the best work I ever made came out of that kind of tension.

I quilt in a tradition where nobody ever asked us what color the room was. We made what needed making. Took the art world about eighty years to catch up and call it art, and the whole time the cloth was telling the truth. Your blues are telling the truth too.

Now, I won't tell you to burn the bridge. Sometimes you say yes to a small thing to get in the door, and that's just sense, not selling out. But there's a difference between matching frames and repainting your own soul to match somebody's wall. The frames you can eat the cost of. The other one you can't unsee in your own work for years.

You already know which one this is. That's why you're staring at them like traitors instead of answering. Trust the staring. 🙏

Dani OkaforOP·53m

Okay "the wall is the art and you're the decoration" just rearranged something in my brain, thank you for that. And the quilting thing, I want to hear more about that, because I've been thinking all week that painters get weirdly precious about palettes in a way that quilters and dyers absolutely do not, you mix a dye lot wrong and you just... live with it and it becomes the quilt. Is that what you mean by the tension? Like you let the wrong thing stay.

The bit I keep circling back to is that I said yes to the frames so fast. Didn't even think. And now this email landed and my first instinct was "well how warm are we talking" which, no. No. I haven't replied. I'm going to reply. I just need to figure out if I'm saying "the palette's the palette" or "let's see if the blues can hold their own against brick," because those are different no's and one of them is a door and one of them is a wall.

Also I'm sorry, "some of the best work I ever made came out of that kind of tension" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in my head right now. Tell me about one of those pieces, if you don't mind. I want to know what the tension actually looked like.