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People talk about the bad galleries, the ones that took too much, paid late, ghosted. But I want to ask about the opposite. The rejection that actually made sense. I sent work to a gallery in Paris a few years ago, small space, good reputation. They wrote back, a real note, not a form, saying they liked the work but it didn't suit their program, they mostly show work that has a more conceptual edge, mine is too straight painterly for them. And you know what? They were right. I was annoyed for a week but they saved me from a bad fit. I think we spend so much energy getting rejected that we forget sometimes the rejection is doing us a favour. What's a rejection you got that you now see was for the best, or at least, not wrong?

The first real gallery that ever said yes to me, I was maybe 30, living on soup, so excited I nearly shook, turned out to be a complete disaster. Didn't pay, lost work, the whole thing collapsed in six months. The rejection I got two years before that, from a proper serious space? Best thing that happened to me. Made me work harder, think clearer, and when I finally got in somewhere right I was ready for it. Anyone else got a rejection they're secretly grateful for? Or am I romanticising failure like an old man.

I once sent a portfolio to a small gallery in Warsaw and they said no, politely, but no. And you know what? I was actually okay with it. The process of preparing the submission, getting my slides organised, writing the artist statement, it made me look at my own work properly for the first time. So even the no taught me something. Anyone else have a rejection that ended up being useful somehow? Or am I just trying to make myself feel better 😅

submitted to a group show two months ago. paid the entry fee, formatted everything exactly to their specs, sent it off. heard nothing. figured that's how it goes. yesterday i get an email, clearly meant for someone internal, that says "mira's work isn't quite right for the curatorial vision, we're going to pass." fine, whatever. but then at the bottom there's a note from one of them to the other: "did we ever actually open her portfolio? i think the link expired." so they didn't even look. charged me $35 to not open a link. and then had the nerve to accidentally send me the proof. i'm not even mad about the rejection. i'm mad about the $35 and the pretending. just say you picked who you already knew and move on.

There's about forty of them now, sitting in a portfolio box under my worktable. Misprints, test pulls, things where the registration was off by just enough. I keep telling myself I'll use them for collage material but I never do. I just keep adding to the stack. I know someone will say it's archive fever or whatever. But I think it's simpler than that. I just can't decide they're nothing yet.

i emailed a gallery back in february. they replied in march saying they were "reviewing my work with the curatorial committee." i followed up in may, still reviewing. july came, i followed up again, got "we'll circle back after summer programming." then in september i get a polite no. like, just say no in march? don't drag me through all the seasons? tell me your longest string-along. not the rejection that stung, the one that wasted your time.

Right so, I'm thinking back to the early days, before I knew hide nor hair about anything really. I had this batch of prints, right, proper proud of them too, and I decided this one gallery in the city was the only place they'd ever live. So I marched in, all a-flutter with nerves and hope, and I'd got this portfolio under my arm, thinking I was the next big thing. The gallerist, a fella with a stare that could curdle milk, took one look at my stuff, barely flicked a page, and then just said, 'We don't do this here.' Didn't say what this was, didn't offer a shred of advice, just shut me down cold. Took me a good few weeks to even pick up a carving tool again after that. What's your worst gallery rejection story, the one that still makes you wince?

ok what's the worst gallery ghosting story you've got. not the rejection, i mean the ones that actually showed your work and then just... evaporated. i had one where the owner went completely dark after the closing. wouldn't answer emails, wouldn't return paintings. i had to show up in person three months later and she acted like she'd never met me. got my work back but she still owes me like $800. at this point it's the principle. anyone else get fully erased post-show or was that just my lucky break

I waited eight months for a reply from a gallery last year. Eight months of checking my email like a fool, convincing myself no news was good news. Finally got a short "we've decided to pass" and I honestly felt relieved, just to know. Anyone else wait forever for a rejection? Or worse, waited forever and never heard back at all?

Quarry let me come pick through their reject pile last month. Brought home a chunk of Barre granite that had a crack running through it, so they'd written it off. Spent three weeks just looking at it, trying to figure out if the crack was a problem or the whole point. Today I finally started cutting. The crack is still there. I think it stays. Feels different working stone you had to wrestle into your truck yourself. Like you already owe it something before you even start.

had one earlier this year who loved my work, wanted to include me in a group show, kept pushing the dates back, then just... stopped returning emails. never said no, just went quiet. i think i'd have respected a rejection more than the vanishing act. anyone else had a gallery ghost them after showing interest? how long did you wait before you wrote it off?

I keep seeing the war stories piling up in here, and I've got a few of my own. But I'm curious about something more basic. When you were starting out with gallery outreach, how many did you approach before one actually took you on? Mine was 22. Twenty-two polite rejections, non-replies, and one very confusing meeting that went nowhere before a small natural-history museum gallery in the Pacific Northwest said yes. That yes changed everything for me, but I nearly gave up at about number 15. I've had students ask me this and I never know what to tell them. What was your number? And was it worth the ones that said no?

A museum shop in Vienna picked up a small edition of my screenprints for their retail. I was thrilled, museum shop, right, that feels like validation. They paid €150 per print, wholesale. I sold them 20. I did the math yesterday because I was avoiding something else. Each print takes me about four hours from exposure to final trim, not counting the drawing time before that, not counting the screens I burned and then rejected, not counting the test proofs. So €150 for roughly six hours of work per print if I'm being generous about what counts as labour. That's €25 an hour if nothing goes wrong. Something always goes wrong. I'm not saying the museum shop ripped me off. That's just the going rate, they were fine to deal with. But I sat there thinking: I have an MFA, I've been doing this fifteen years, and I'm making €25 an hour selling to an institution that will mark it up to €400 and call it affordable art. And I said yes because I was flattered they asked. I don't know what the right number is. I just know that the gap between what feels good for the ego and what's actually sustainable keeps getting wider and I keep choosing the ego.

I'm working on a still life with a white tablecloth, just folds, light, the usual, and I switched back to lead white for the thick passages after years of using zinc like a good modern painter. And now I remember why I left zinc in the first place. It's dead in the tube. Chalky. No body. You can't build an edge with it, it just sits there looking correct and lifeless. I spent this morning scraping a passage I'd redone three times, put down a fat stroke of lead white instead, and it's not even dry yet and already the whole thing breathes differently. My teacher used to say the material has to fight you a little or you're not really painting. I thought that was romantic nonsense for years. Now I'm not so sure. Anyone else find themselves going backwards on materials, returning to something you rejected because it made things harder, but the result is better?

There was this gallerist in Leipzig, maybe seven years ago, who saw my student work at an open studio and invited me to bring things by. I was terrified. I had nothing ready, loose proofs, some plates, a notebook full of ideas I hadn't made yet. She looked at it all and said "you're thinking about the right things, come back when you have something to say." Not a rejection exactly, more like a deadline I set for myself. I came back two years later with a real body of work. She took it. And I still think about that, how she saw something before I'd proven it, and said so. Did anyone else have that one early believer? The person who took you seriously before you had any reason to be taken seriously?