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 back office in 2004, nursing a lukewarm espresso and staring at a contract a young painter had brought me, looking like he’d just been handed a golden ticket. He thought the signature meant he’d finally “made it,” but he hadn’t actually read the clauses regarding exhibition costs or territorial exclusivity. […]
I remember standing in the back of a crowded exhibition in the late nineties, staring at a landscape that cost more than my first car. The artist was explaining the “spiritual depth” of his process, but as I leaned in, I could see the structural failure: the colors were muddy, the light was flat, and […]
I remember a Tuesday in 2014, standing in a client’s hallway, watching a professional mover tilt a heavy, framed landscape just a fraction too far. There was no crash, just a sickening, dull thud against the doorframe that made my stomach drop. That client had spent years meticulously curating their home, yet they had absolutely […]
I remember sitting in my back office in 2004, staring at a stack of canvases from a young painter who had just spent three years chasing every passing trend like a frantic magpie. He thought he was being “versatile,” but to me, he just looked like he didn’t know who he was. There is this […]
I remember a young painter named Julian who sat in my gallery back in ’98, staring at his price list with the expression of a man facing a firing squad. He had priced his large-scale oils so low—out of a misplaced sense of modesty—that he wasn’t even covering the cost of the linen, let alone […]
Most art students think that learning how to paint still life is about mastering the physics of light or the precise geometry of a porcelain bowl, but they couldn’t be more wrong. I spent twenty-six years watching collectors walk past technically “perfect” fruit studies because the paintings lacked soul—they were merely exercises in mimicry rather […]
I remember sitting in the back of a dusty studio in 1994, watching a young painter spend four thousand pounds on heavy-bodied oils and Belgian linen, only to realize his composition was fundamentally broken because he’d neglected the charcoal stage. We are constantly sold this lie that “art” begins with the expensive materials—the thick impasto, […]
Oil on canvas, 60cm x 80cm, 2014. I remember looking at a particularly luminous landscape during a mid-winter opening, feeling the exact moment the room shifted from polite chatter to actual commerce. Most people think a private view is just a glorified cocktail hour where people sip cheap Prosecco and pretend to understand abstraction, but […]
I remember a Tuesday afternoon in my old gallery, sitting across from a woman who had just inherited a collection of mid-century abstracts. She was terrified, clutching her handbag, convinced that if she didn’t find a “specialist” with a velvet-lined office, she was being swindled. She’d been told that understanding how dealers buy from private […]
Stop looking for a magic key or a secret handshake to get through those heavy gallery doors. Most of the advice you’ll find online—the kind that suggests you need a glossy, high-concept portfolio and a way to “network” your way into a cocktail party—is absolute nonsense designed to make the industry feel more exclusive than […]