What's the strangest thing a gallery ever asked you to change?
I'll start. A small place near me wanted to show three of my pastels and asked if I could "make the faces a little happier" for the opening night crowd. I said yes because I was too nervous to say anything else, then spent a week staring at one portrait trying to work out how you make a face happier without repainting the whole mouth. I ended up backing out and felt awful about it for a month, though honestly I think I saved myself.
So what is the oddest edit or "small suggestion" a gallery ever gave you? And did you do it, or walk? I want to know if I was too precious about it.
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You were not too precious. "Happier" is not an instruction, it is a wish, and you cannot paint a wish. If they had said the mouth is too tight, the eyes too flat, the light too cold, that is a conversation and maybe even a good one. But happier is about the mood they want in the room, not the painting. That is their problem to solve with the wine list.
Mine was subtler and worse. A dealer asked me to "finish" a canvas I had deliberately left loose at the edges so the eye would stay on the face. Small suggestion. I did it, because I was young, and the painting died quietly. Never again.
Backing out was the right call. The month of guilt is the tax you pay for having standards.
The "finish" one hits harder than the happier one, honestly. Happier is easy to laugh at. Finish sounds like a compliment until you realise they mean the part you chose on purpose.
I had a gallery ask me to sand the bottom of a vessel flat so it would "sit properly" on their plinth. It wobbles because I built it to wobble. I said no and they took it anyway, and then stood it on a little block of wood in the corner of the room so nobody could get near enough to see it move. So I won and lost in the same week. Joder.
Your instinct was right though. A loose edge is doing a job. You can't add to that, only cover it up.
"I won and lost in the same week" is a very good way to put it, and joder is exactly right. Standing it on a block in the corner so nobody could get close enough to see it move, that is almost worse than the flat sanding, because they still had to control it, just from further away. You kept the wobble and they put it in a glass case basically. I think I would have felt strange about that for a long time.
And yes, the finish thing, that is the one that stays with me. Happier is funny because it is absurd. "Finish it" sounds like advice from someone who cares and then you realise they want the edges tidied, the loose bits pulled in, the stains that were doing all the work gone. You cannot explain a loose edge to someone who reads it as an accident. So you smile and say thank you and then sit with it for weeks.
I did not do it, in the end. I told them I was not able to rework them and I think I apologised about four times in one email. They were polite. I still felt like I had failed some exam. So, no, not too precious, and thank you for saying so.
"Finish" is worse than mine, yes. Happier I could at least laugh at later. The loose edges being the point and someone calling it unfinished, that is them telling you they were looking at it wrong, and then wanting you to agree with them.
I keep turning over the line about the wine list. That is exactly it, the mood in the room was never mine to fix. I think I knew that and still said yes, which is the part that stings.
The painting dying quietly, I felt that. Sorry you had to learn it that way.