We’ve all heard it before, many times in fact. Maybe you just lost your first soccer game. Maybe your girlfriend just dumped you. I’ve said it a number of times before and somehow, we all think that it has the power to make a shitty situation slightly less shitty. The phrase I am referring to is, “ya’ win some, ya’ lose some!”
The idea behind this phrase is, of course, to make sure you realize that the experience that didn’t go your way is in the past, forget about it, move on, there are plenty of opportunities out there for you in the future. I agree with this, but I think that often times, we are too quick to leave a negative situation in order to seek out the positive one. This can be a huge oversight because failure is rich with lessons. Make sure you dig up all of the lessons in a failure before you move on.
I had a huge fail this past week. The funny thing is, to an outsider, it actually looks like a huge win! That win? I got accepted into my very first exhibition with a legit, successful art gallery in New York (I am going to leave their name out of it for multiple reasons, one being that I am still scared of the gallery owner). I think it is important for everyone to understand that this whole art thing is new to me. I didn’t go to school for art, I don’t have tons of mentors that have all of this advice that I have been soaking up for years. I am just a passionate person who happened to find their passion in art 5 years ago and decided to start sharing sketches on instagram. I just started to draw a lot and share progress pictures on social media and things started to slowly grow for me. I became better, bit by bit, and my following grew, bit by bit, till I reached a point where I could no longer go a day without drawing. I also realized that the more I practiced, the better I became. Now if only I could find a way to turn this into a living so that I really could draw all day every day.
To me, the obvious solution to this was to get into an art gallery. I would have my work on their wall, surrounded by all of these other talented artists, and someone would come in one day, see my piece on the wall and insist that they must have it. And, if anyone has been into a gallery before, pieces of art can be insanely expensive. Insanely expensive art sold=insanely successful artist. Am I right? Kind of…but that’s easier said than done.
An art gallery was the key in my mind. So I kept drawing and drawing and around the 111th hour of a drawing that was the largest piece I had ever done and was a piece I was becoming insanely proud of, I saw an open call to artists at a gallery I had actually been in 3 years before. It had the same kind of art that I love and that inspires my style. Of course, I was going to do everything I could to get into this gallery. I finished the drawing, wrote an artist statement (that I had never written or read before), put together an embarrassingly short CV, worked on an artist bio and I submitted the piece. Then I waited. I filled the week of waiting time with positive self-talk, “I got this, I am in the gallery, I am going to sell my drawing, this is it, I am going to make it as an artist, I am making it as an artist.” I got the e-mail and read the list of artists who got into the gallery and I did it. I was officially accepted into a beautiful gallery. I screamed, called my boyfriend and my mom, texted my family. Everyone was so excited for me.
I’ll spare you all of the details, but I spent the next week frantically preparing to ship off my drawing to the gallery before the opening night. I spent close to $1,000 on image capture to make prints, making the prints, getting the drawing framed, and buying more business cards. I was not expecting everything to cost so much money…this was even harder for me when I read the e-mail from the gallery telling me that they take 50% of the sale if they sell it. 50% commission. So after spending 161 hours on 1 drawing that would sit on their wall for a month, they would walk away with half of my hard-earned money. Yikes.
Before I go any further, let me just say that I understand that gallerists work very hard to sell the pieces that they hang on their walls. I also understand that they need to make money. It might not be as painful for someone who cranks out 4-5 paintings/month to sell a piece and give the gallery 50%. They may have money coming in from multiple galleries and it might not be as big of a deal. But for me, I work full time and I am not able to finish piece after piece. It takes me months, sometimes even years, to finish a piece. I can’t give away half.
I went back and forth with whether or not I was going to keep my price at what it was. I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t undervaluing my artwork so I finally decided to e-mail the gallery to ask what they thought. The e-mail I received back hurt my heart.
My initial price that I set for my work was apparently way too much. They didn’t do the calculations and they actually decided that, in order for it to sell, I had to cut my price by 60%. And then they would get 50% of that reduced price. I thanked them for their honesty, acknowledged that I was maybe a bit naive and silly, but asked if I could just stick with my original price. The owner of the gallery responded and said, “You are not silly, but unrealistic. And it will not sell at that price.” Ouch. I also learned from his e-mail that pen and pencil work are not valued as highly as paintings. I really don’t understand this at all and won’t even try to understand it.
After doing all of the math, if I decided to sell the drawing at the price that the gallery suggested, I would make less money on the drawing than I spent getting it ready for the gallery. This didn’t sit well with me and honestly, I would enjoy having the drawing sit in my apartment and be admired by me and my boyfriend than selling it for so cheap. So I responded to his e-mail, thanked him for the opportunity, and pulled my drawing from the exhibition.
I might be crazy, but I am not afraid to be called that. I’ve been called that before and I am sure that I will be called that many more times in my future. But it didn’t sit right for me. I also believed in myself. I believed that it could sell for the original price that I set and I didn’t like that this guy was taking my piece into his gallery, telling me that it wouldn’t sell and that I was being unrealistic. I could sell the drawing on my own one day, for the original price, and get to keep 100% of the profit.
This experience opened my eyes to a lot of things about the art industry and I am happy that it happened. Of course it would’ve been awesome to be in a gallery, but now I am not even sure that galleries are the right place for my artwork. Would I just be sending myself down a path of more and more galleries that I would have to argue with about the valuation of my artwork? That doesn’t sound like something that I want to be a part of.
I also realized that about 80% of my favorite artists to follow on instagram don’t work with galleries. They’ve said that to me or I’ve heard them say it in interviews. Galleries take so much from you. Also, there are so many other ways to spread your name out there and build a brand off of it. It used to be that you needed to go to a specific art school, work for a number of years under the right artist, and get into a well-established gallery if you wanted to get anywhere with your art. The awesome thing these days, with the help of social media, you can just create something that looks cool, put it up on instagram, and get noticed by anybody. And….IT’S FREE. One of my favorite quotes was said by Steve Martin, and I think that it is perfect for self-taught artists. “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
I am not a full time artist, I am not a professional artist. But I believe that I will be one day very soon. And I know this because I believe in myself, and I value my work and what I do. I know that I will make it much farther believing in myself and my passion than waiting around for the right gallery owner to believe in my drawing.