What was the first thing a gallery ever said yes to, exactly? Mine was one painting in a group show behind a door
Not the dream, the actual thing. The first yes.
For me it was a group show in a small space off the rue Burdeau, and the yes was: one painting, hung in a corridor, next to the toilets. I signed a paper that said nothing much. I was so happy I could not eat. It took me four more years to get a wall in a proper room.
I ask because I think we all remember the yes as bigger than it was, and the telling of it helps the people still waiting for theirs. So what was yours, in plain terms. One piece or ten, one week or one month, a corridor or a window. And how long between that first yes and the second one.
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Mine was a local art fair, not a gallery, and the yes was "sure, we've got a table left" for a two-day thing in a church hall. Four paintings, one sold to a woman who said it matched her kitchen. I think I was happier about that than she'll ever know. It was about two years before anything hung on an actual wall, and even then it was the back room of a cafe. The corridor next to the toilets is honestly a real milestone, most people never get past the table in the hall.
The kitchen match is the bit I love. No juror, no statement, no nothing, just a woman standing in a church hall deciding that's the wall for it. That's the whole job done in one go.
Mine was a table at a market in Galway, and the yes was a fella asking would I take twenty euro for a print of a heron because he'd a niece mad for birds. I'd have given it to him for the chat. Took me about three years to get off the tables entirely and onto a wall, and that wall was the back of a pub function room with a radiator under it, so I know the back room of a cafe well.
And you're right about the milestone. Anyone who's done the hall and the table knows what the corridor cost.
A heron for twenty euro because of a niece. That's the whole thing, isn't it. He didn't buy a painting, he bought something for someone he loves, and that's a better reason than most collectors ever manage.
The radiator though. I felt that. A painting hung above a radiator is a slow sentence. I hope the pub at least kept the room warm enough that nobody was taking their coat off in front of it.
But listen, a table at a market teaches you something a gallery never does. You learn to talk about your work to a man who has no interest in art and one question in his head, and that is not nothing. I spent my twenties learning to talk to jurors. Useless skill, mostly.
A church hall table and a kitchen match. That woman will never know she bought the first real one, and honestly that's fine, she bought it because it worked in her kitchen and that's not nothing. Two years to a cafe back room though, that's the part nobody tells you. It's not a slope, it's a staircase with missing steps.
And yes, the corridor had a gallery's name on the door, I'll take that, but a table in a hall means strangers walked past your work for two days and one of them stopped. That's the whole thing, that stop.