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 small market town gallery in 1998, staring at a check for a landscape painting that had just sold, realizing that after the framer, the shipping, and my own fifty-percent cut, the artist was walking away with barely enough to cover their rent. There is a pervasive, almost sacred myth in […]
I remember sitting in the back office of my gallery in 2008, nursing a lukewarm gin and tonic while a lovely painter—a woman who could make light dance on canvas—cried because she felt “guilty” about increasing her rates. She thought she was being kind to her collectors by keeping her prices stagnant, but all she […]
I remember sitting in my gallery back in 2004, watching a talented young painter practically apologize to a collector for the price on a canvas. He had spent three weeks agonizing over his math, trying to balance his rent against his “artistic worth,” only to end up underselling himself so badly that I had to […]
I remember sitting in my back office twenty years ago, staring at a digital file sent by a promising painter that looked more like a blurry smudge of grey than a vibrant oil on canvas. He had spent three months on the piece and three minutes on the photo, and quite frankly, he’d just thrown […]
I remember sitting in my small gallery office, nursing a lukewarm Earl Grey and staring at a submission from a lovely painter whose work was, frankly, transcendent. But her artist statement? It was a dense, impenetrable thicket of “liminality,” “juxtaposition,” and “interrogating the zeitgeist” that made my eyes glaze over within three sentences. I didn’t […]
I remember sitting in my back office ten years ago, staring at a painter who had just been rejected for the third time by a major arts council. He was talented, his work was vital, and he was utterly devastated because he thought he hadn’t been “artistic” enough for the committee. He’d treated the application […]
I remember sitting in my gallery office ten years ago, watching a young painter—a brilliant, raw talent—weep because she’d spent her entire year’s savings on a “prestigious” three-month program in Tuscany. She thought she was buying a career, but all she’d actually bought was a very expensive view of an olive grove and a certificate […]
I spent twenty-six years watching young artists walk into my gallery with eyes full of wonder and pockets full of nothing, most of them convinced that if they didn’t have a degree from a prestigious academy, they were essentially invisible. They’ve been fed this expensive lie that the “Art World” is a walled garden accessible […]
We need to stop pretending that an expensive degree is a golden ticket to a solo show at a Mayfair gallery. I spent twenty-six years watching bright-eyed graduates stumble into my gallery, clutching impressive portfolios but possessing absolutely no idea how to price a canvas or, more importantly, how to talk to a collector without […]