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 […]
I remember sitting in the back of a crowded, overheated studio opening in the late nineties, watching a young painter try to explain away his blatant theft of a contemporary master’s color palette as “a dialogue with the lineage of the medium.” It was nonsense, of course. He wasn’t in a dialogue; he was just […]
Stop waiting for a lightning bolt of divine inspiration to strike your studio floor; it’s a romanticized lie that keeps talented people broke and staring at blank canvases. I spent twenty-six years watching artists agonize over the “sacred mystery” of how artists find their subject, as if they were waiting for a sign from the […]
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 […]