“Your work isn’t really suited for this gallery.” A curator said this to me in New York, on Gallery Row. An artist isn’t supposed to walk into a gallery cold and expect a gallerist to look at her art, but I was carrying it around, and she asked.
I already knew my acrylic realist paintings (what I was doing at the time) were not in the same vein as this gallery’s work. It had taken me weeks and months to paint some of these pieces. What hung on their walls were framed paper with scribbling on it.
Literal scribbles. Each piece looked like it had taken under 30 seconds to make. And the prices ranged from $4,000 to $8,000.
For a moment, I considered going back home and coming back to that New York gallery with a portfolio full of 15 pieces that I could do on a Saturday morning, but never did. I had to do the work I loved not spend time working on something that still probably wouldn’t get into a gallery.
In Los Angeles, a gallery owner on Rodeo Drive—in an area I thought for sure no one would even look at my art—asked to see it when I told her I was an artist. She actually took me into her office and looked at my work. She said she liked it, and encouraged me. I felt like I had wings leaving there!
Both experiences were lessons: There might be a gallery for every artist, somewhere. Apparently, there was a customer for every piece of art. You just have to find your market.
And above all, be yourself. Someone has to be.
