Search

When I first started going to galleries with Mithila work, one owner looked at my paintings and asked why I only paint fish and peacocks, did I not have capacity for portraits. I was so taken aback I said nothing. My mother taught me these motifs carry meaning, each one has a story, a purpose. That man saw decoration only. Later I realised this is part of the work now, explaining what our art is. But it is tiring, always. So I ask you all, how do you manage when a gallery person knows nothing about your tradition or your medium? Do you educate them, or do you walk away? And has any gallery person surprised you by learning, truly learning? Share your experience ji.

I'm preparing to reach out to a few galleries and I'm wondering about the best approach. Cold emailing feels efficient, but I've also heard some curators prefer a studio visit or a physical submission. Is a well-crafted email enough to get your foot in the door these days, or is it usually a waste of time without a personal connection or prior introduction? I'm curious about your experiences.

Y'all ever walk into a gallery and they say yes so fast it gives you pause? I had one a few years back, lady barely looked at my photos, just said "love it, we'd be honored, let's get you on the calendar." And you know what? It was all talk. Never returned a single email after that. I've learned the hard way that a quick yes don't always mean a good yes. Sometimes the ones that take their time, ask real questions, want to see the work in person, those are the ones that follow through. What's your experience? Did a fast yes ever work out for you, or did it fizzle like mine?

A gallery person told me in October that my account was "quiet." She meant it as a problem. So I did the experiment backwards. Turned off comments for six weeks. Posted maybe nine times, all photographs of work in progress, no captions longer than a line, no questions, no "which one do you prefer," nothing. Just the painting and where it was in the process. A shoulder blocked in, the shadow under a bowl still wet. I sold three pieces in that stretch. Normally I sell one every two months, and two of the three buyers messaged me privately to ask about the glaze, not to say anything nice. One of them was a man in Bordeaux who had never commented on anything in his life. He just watched. Six weeks of watching and then he wrote me a paragraph about the vermilion in the drapery. I am not saying comments are worthless. I am saying I had confused being talked about with being looked at, and those are not the same muscle. When the comments were on I would check them. Thirty times a day, honestly. And every check pulled me out of the painting and into the performance of the painting, which are two different rooms. Bof. Maybe it works differently if you are selling something other than a slow object. But I am not going back.

been running an experiment since mid october. put "8x10 = $180, 18x24 = $650" right in my bio, top line, before the "i don't do logos for exposure" bit. not one person has mentioned it. no lowball offers. no "wow that's expensive" DMs. nothing. what i did get: three inquiries that skipped the whole "so how much would something like this be" dance and went straight to "can you do a 16x20 of my dog." closed two of them in under a week, which for me is warp speed, normally i lose people in the four-day gap between their first message and my reply because i'm bad at email. the weird part is i put this off for a literal year because i was convinced a number in the bio would scare off the casual followers and make me look like a shop instead of an artist. turns out the casual followers aren't the ones buying and the buyers just want to know if they can afford you before they invest emotionally in liking the work. still not sure it's "working" so much as it's not actively hurting. the sample size is like five people. but i've stopped writing the price paragraph in every second message and that alone is worth it. curious if anyone else has tried the same thing and gotten the opposite result, because i keep waiting for the other shoe.

I'm realizing the red flags are easy to list (we've all done it) but the green flags are harder to name, and honestly more useful. For me: I was emailing with this tiny gallery in a converted house, kind of half expecting nothing, and the owner asked me what time of day I usually paint and whether my work looks better in morning or evening light. Nobody had ever asked me that. Not a single person. And I was like oh. You actually look at the work, not just the jpeg. Ended up showing there and it was a genuinely good experience. So what's the thing that flipped it for you? A question they asked, something they said no to, a way they talked about another artist, whatever. The small signal that made you go okay, these people are real. Also curious if anyone's had the opposite where a place looked perfect on paper (nice space, nice website, says all the right things) and then you got in the room and something was just off. My partner thinks I'm too suspicious of nice websites and I need to know if I'm right haha.

So I ran out of gesso mid-priming a canvas tonight and instead of just going to bed like a normal person I read about making your own with rabbit skin glue and whiting. Which obviously I'm not doing because the thought of rendering animal glue in my kitchen makes me a little queasy AND my 8 year old would absolutely try to eat it. But I did mix some acrylic medium with plaster of Paris to see what happens and now there's a weird little test square drying on cardboard that I'll report back on like it matters. It probably won't be anything, but honestly the kitchen-table science is half the fun of this hobby. I've ruined two good wooden spoons and my husband has stopped asking questions. Anyone else ever actually bothered with homemade grounds or do we all just buy the tub?

A friend from years ago asked me to paint her daughter's portrait for her 18th. I said yes at €600, already half what I'd charge a stranger for a 50x60cm oil on linen. She's a friend, fine. Then the emails started. "Could you do it from these five photos instead?" "Actually she's wearing a different dress now, can you change the colour?" "Her hair is shorter than that photo shows." "My mother thinks the background should be lighter." I repainted the face from new reference, adjusted the dress twice, scraped and repainted the background. All told I probably spent close to 25 hours on a painting that should have taken maybe 12. At my usual hourly rate for commissioned work that comes out to about €24 an hour. My assistant, who stretches canvases, makes €16. So I earned roughly the same as the person who stretches my canvases, for a job that required twenty years of training. The friend was happy. The daughter cried when she saw it. Beautiful moment. I don't regret it exactly. But I sat down afterwards and did the math and realised I'd basically given her a €1,200 painting plus a free workshop in how to manage an artist. Never again without a contract that says: one reference, one revision, anything beyond that is a new fee. Curious if anyone else has a number attached to the "learning experience" of a commission that ran away from you.

Myself Ramesh, Mithila painting from Madhubani district in Bihar. I want to ask something to those who have dealt with galleries. My first attempt was not by email at all. There was an exhibition in Patna where I had sent two paintings through a cooperative, and a gallery person saw them there and asked who is the artist. That is how my first proper show came, not by applying but by someone seeing the work hanging. After that I tried emailing some galleries in Delhi, and mostly no reply came. So my experience is: the work has to be seen by eyes. But I know many artists now send portfolio by email only, and some gallerists say never come without appointment. So tell me ji, which way you did it? Email with photos first, or you carried the paintings and went? And for those who walked in, did they see you or send you away? I want to know what actually works, because I am still learning this side of things. 🙏