I remember sitting in a drafty studio in 2004, watching a young painter weep because a prestigious London dealer had passed on her series. She believed that without that specific stamp of approval, her work was essentially invisible. There is this pervasive, romanticised lie circulating in art schools that a gallery acts as a divine […]
I remember standing in the back of a drafty warehouse in 2004, watching a “specialist” team treat a delicate, large-scale mixed media piece like it was a crate of cheap-o-ware from a discount retailer. They were sweating, cursing, and moving with all the grace of a demolition crew, and I realized then that most people […]
I remember sitting in my gallery office ten years ago, staring at a print of a landscape—oil on canvas, 30×40, 2012—that had been reproduced on a cheap tea towel without the artist’s permission. The artist was devastated, weeping because they felt their “soul” had been stolen, while the person who made the towels treated it […]
I remember a collector coming into my gallery ten years ago, clutching a glossy catalog like it was a holy relic, convinced he’d found the next big thing because a certain critic had used the word “sublime” in a review. He was ready to drop five figures on a piece that, frankly, had all the […]
I remember sitting in my small gallery back in 2004, staring at a stack of applications from artists who clearly thought they were writing for a PhD committee rather than a human being. They would hand me these dense, impenetrable walls of text, filled with words like “juxtaposition” and “liminality,” used as if they were […]
I remember sitting in a dimly lit corner of a London auction house twenty years ago, listening to a man in a bespoke suit explain the “sophisticated complexities” of liquidity management. He spoke about how loans between institutions work as if he were describing the inner workings of a star, using enough jargon to make […]
I remember sitting in my back office in 2008, nursing a lukewarm Earl Grey and staring at a smudge of cobalt blue on a signed agreement that had no mention of shipping insurance or payment timelines. A lovely, talented painter—the kind of person who thinks a legal document is an insult to the creative spirit—had […]
I remember sitting in my gallery back in 2004, staring at a stack of twenty-two wildly different oil on canvas works, all roughly 40x40cm, 2004, from a painter who had just “found their voice.” They were all technically brilliant, but they were a mess—a scattergun approach that left me with nothing to pitch to my […]
I remember the distinct, sickening sound of a heavy oak frame hitting a concrete floor in my gallery back in ’98—a sound that felt less like breaking wood and more like a financial heart attack. I spent the next three hours on the phone with an agent who spoke in nothing but impenetrable legalese, trying […]
Most artists approach the search for a residency like they’re looking for a holy grail, convinced that a few months in a drafty studio in Tuscany is the only thing standing between them and a career at the Tate. They spend thousands on application fees and travel, chasing a prestige that often doesn’t exist, only […]