The art world runs on information asymmetry and it suits almost everyone except the artist. I write about what a commission split covers, why your work is priced wrong in both directions, how a gallery decides who to show, and what a collector is actually buying. I sold other people's work for twenty-six years and took half, so I can tell you exactly what that half was for and when it was not earned.
I remember sitting in my small market town gallery, clutching a lukewarm glass of Chardonnay, staring at a portfolio from a young painter who had “the look” but absolutely no sense of how to actually exist in a room. Everyone tells you that there’s some mystical, divine spark that triggers a gallerist’s interest, or that […]
I remember standing in a drafty, white-walled gallery in the late nineties, watching a particularly pretentious critic use words like “ethereal luminescence” to describe a landscape that was, quite frankly, just a well-placed dab of titanium white. It’s the same nonsense I see today: people treating the physics of optics like some sort of mystical, […]
I remember sitting in the back of a dusty studio in 1994, watching a young painter attempt to control a wash that was clearly winning the argument. He was treating his pigments like they were obedient soldiers, when in reality, he was dealing with a liquid medium that has its own stubborn, unpredictable temperament. Most […]
I remember sitting in a drafty corner of my old gallery in 2004, watching a collector pay five figures for a piece that was essentially a well-packaged lie—a work that mimicked a movement it hadn’t actually earned. People talk about a “complete guide to authenticity” as if it’s something you can find in a certificate […]
I remember a rainy Tuesday in 2004, sitting in the back of my gallery with a painter named Elias who had just watched a collector walk out after haggling him down by forty percent. He sat there, staring at his hands, convinced that being a “good person” meant accepting whatever crumbs the market deigned to […]
I remember sitting in my small market town gallery back in ’98, nursing a lukewarm Earl Grey and staring at a stack of unsolicited portfolios that looked more like ransom notes than professional submissions. One young painter, quite talented but utterly lost, had practically burst through my door, demanding to know why I wasn’t “discovering” […]
I remember sitting in the back of a crowded, dimly lit studio opening in 2004, watching a young painter try to explain his “conceptual use of light” to a very confused collector. He was using all the right academic buzzwords, but the painting itself felt utterly limp, like a soufflé that had collapsed the moment […]
I remember sitting in a dimly lit backroom of a London auction house in 2004, staring at a stunning oil on canvas, 60cm x 80cm, 1952, and feeling a cold knot of dread in my stomach. The dealer was leaning in, whispering sweet nothings about the “extraordinary pedigree” of the piece, but the paperwork was […]
I remember sitting in my gallery back in the late nineties, watching a collector hesitate before a beautiful oil on canvas—twelve by twelve inches, 1994—because they were terrified of “doing it wrong” without a white-glove dealer holding their hand. They thought that without a prestigious street address and a polished salesperson, they were somehow participating […]
I remember sitting in the back of a crowded studio in the late nineties, watching a young painter weep because his oil landscape had turned into a muddy, grey mess after a week of improper layering. He’d been told that oils were the only “serious” medium for a professional, a romantic notion that ignored the […]