when a gallery asks what your work "means," do you actually answer or do you make something up on the spot

i got asked this at a walk-in last month and i said the whole thing was "about color as a kind of language" which, when i got back in the car, i realized means absolutely nothing.

my honest answer is that i paint flat loud stuff because it looks good and i like it, and saying that out loud to someone in a blazer feels like admitting i failed the assignment. so i improvise. badly.

do you all give the real answer or the gallery answer? and has anyone here actually said "i just like how it looks" to a dealer's face and lived to tell it

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Karen Wessel·1h

Ha, the "about color as a kind of language" is so real. I've said something almost identical about a landscape that is genuinely just a field I liked the light on.

I don't think the flat loud answer is a fail though. Honestly most of the time I think they're asking what you were after, not for a thesis. When I've been honest it's gone fine, and the times I improvised something grand I felt like a fraud the whole rest of the conversation, which is worse. One guy at a small co-op asked me this and I said I paint what I want to look at on my own wall and he just said "good, keep doing that." Not every room is that room, but it's not the trap it feels like from the parking lot.

Also your stuff sounds fun. I'm over here doing careful little birch trees like a coward.

Karen Wessel·1h

"a field i liked the light on" is basically my whole artist statement and I've stopped apologizing for it.

The one thing I'd add: the "about color as a kind of language" line isn't a lie exactly, it's just backwards. You were standing in a room where the small true answer sounded too small, so you reached for the big one. I've done it. But the smaller one is the one that actually describes the painting, and people can tell.

I will say the honest answer goes over better in a co-op or a local fair than in a real gallery, and I've made peace with the fact that I mostly sell to people who like a field, not people who want a thesis. Not sure that's a loss.

Teddy LinOP·1m

"backwards" is the word i needed for it. standing there, the true answer feels like a teacup and the room wants a monument, so you reach for the monument. and then you get in the car and hear yourself.

the co-op vs real gallery thing stings a little because it's true. i've had a guy in a good blazer nod along to my whole spiel and i'm 90% sure he was nodding at the price tag. the people who actually buy my work are the ones who say "i like the orange" and mean it.

anyway i'm stealing "a field i liked the light on" and filing the serial numbers off. it's a better statement than anything i've written down.

Teddy LinOP·1h

"a field i liked the light on" is exactly it though. that's the whole painting. we just get weird about saying it out loud because it sounds too small for the room we're standing in.

and yeah, the fraud thing is the real cost. i can live with sounding dumb for ten seconds, i can't live with nodding along to my own fake thesis for twenty minutes and then having to keep it up next time they see me. "i paint what i want on my own wall" and the guy just said good. that's the whole interaction. i've been building it up in my head for years for nothing lol

Gloria Mae Jackson·2h

Oh honey, I know that car ride home. Sat in one myself more than once after somebody in a nice jacket asked me what my quilts "mean" and I heard myself say the word "juxtaposition" out loud.

Here's what I've landed on after a lot of years of this. When you say "I just like how it looks," that IS the real answer, but it's a short answer to a long question, and the person asking don't know how to hold it. So they think you're being shy or difficult. What they're really asking is how you see. So I tell em what I see. I'll say the reds next to that muddy purple make the whole thing hum, or that I put that off square piece in on purpose cause the eye needs somewhere to rest. That's not making anything up. That's just saying the looking out loud. It's the same truth as "I like it," only it gives em something to stand on.

Now the ones that want a whole theory, they ain't asking about your work, they asking you to perform for the room. You don't owe em that. My granddaughter tells me the young folks call it "no is a full sentence." I'd say "I like it" is a full sentence too. Say it plain and let the silence sit there. Most of em respect it more than the color-as-language business, cause they hear that one all day.

Don't fail yourself trying to pass their test. Your eye is the whole credential.

Teddy LinOP·59m

"how you see" is the part that got me. because yeah, i can talk about what i see for an hour, that's not the problem. i can tell you exactly why that orange is doing what it's doing next to that grey. it's the translation into Meaning with a capital M that i fumble, like the seeing is the actual work and the meaning is just something i say afterward to make it sound like i planned it.

and "juxtaposition" out loud, in your own voice, in a nice room. i felt that in my chest. we've all been through it.

i think you're right that "i like how it looks" is real but too short for the room. maybe the fix is just answering the longer version of the question without calling it that. like they ask what it means and you tell them what you saw instead of what it Means. same info, different grammar. nobody has to know.