Matt Smith: 0:00

Yeah, that's where I get sideways with galleries if they start trying to tell you that you owe them.

Michelle Dunaway: 0:06

I mean, one of the things with being a fine artist, you do have to get used to like there's an ebb and flow, and it is good to be in several different galleries. I mean, nowadays people sell their work directly on the internet, and that's something you can do as well too. I I don't do that except for commissions, only because I established with galleries and they work really hard for me, and so I want to honor that relationship.

Laura Arango Baier: 0:27

Welcome to the Faso Podcast, where we believe that fortune favors of oldbrush. My name is Laura Baier, and I'm your host. For those of you who are new to the podcast, we are a podcast that covers art marketing techniques and all sorts of business tips, specifically to help artists learn to better sell their work. We interview artists at all stages of their careers, as well as others who are in careers tied to the art world, in order to hear their advice and insights. Welcome back to another compilation episode. Today, we're going deep on one relationship that shapes many painting careers, whether you love it or dread it-the one between an artist and a gallery. We pulled the best, most specific moments on this topic from across the show's run, from first impressions to knowing when to walk away. No new guests today, just the collected wisdom of the artists who've actually lived this. Let's get into it. Let's start with first impressions, because how you show up matters just as much as a work itself. Hilary Couture on gallery opening etiquette. Jennifer Balkin on how much the unwritten rules have changed since she started, and Ellen Howard on what actually happened the one time she walked into a gallery with her portfolio under her arm.

Hilarie Couture: 1:31

You know, I think it's important to, as I've already said, to continue to learn and grow, take advantage of any opportunities you can to get yourself out there. There's some etiquette that you need to be aware of when you're going to a gallery opening, for instance. I know that I've had a show, and other artists will come in and want to talk to the gallery or the gallery manager about their work, and it's not the right time to do that. Really, I mean, I feel like you can make a connection, you can introduce yourself, and maybe mention that you're an artist, but don't take the thunder away from that person that's having their opening that night, and try to monopolize the gallery manager, and you know, talk about your own art. I think you know, there's a time and a place for

Jennifer Balkan: 2:28

it. You know, I had to when I was thinking about this question. I kind of had to like go back and actually remember a few of the steps. Like before, I was like, okay, here I go, and you know, and play that out a little bit. It was in 2005 when I I think I could have I said like I officially left the part time job I had as a a research assistant at University of Texas, which is which was a great thing to be able to do because I could fill the rest of my hours with painting, drawing stuff, and before then, my first like opportunity to show work was in 2003, and. I was invited, kind of like an artist collective of sorts, to exhibit two paintings, and it was like was a really big deal for me, and and and they were received. They were received pretty well, and I then, by kind of via that, had an invitation to a local gallery, and quickly developed a relationship with them. And they and they offered to give me a solo show in '04, and so that was super exciting. These are the days where you know, hard to believe for most artists now, but you you could walk into a gallery with your images under your arm and be like, "Hi, I'm an artist. You want to look at my you know my portfolio, which later on, even even like a little while after that, I remember people saying, "Don't ever do that again, or like,"Just do not do that. Don't dare do that in New York. You might be able to do that in Austin, but you know, this all like there are just so many rules and and and and like good guidance as to what you should and shouldn't do as a as a pounding the pavement literally artist. I

Ellen Howard: 4:44

think I started really with local shows, getting into local shows and seeing what was accepted, and then getting into some of the national shows, and then also going to galleries that I was interested in, going to their open. Studios or their, and just seeing how that worked and who was represented. You know what their work looked like. You know would my work fit into that? But it took a. It was a long process. It wasn't something that you just walk in the door and you're accepted into a gallery. So, but yeah, after many years, I did actually approach a gallery in Carmel, and I brought him 10 of my pieces, and and he he said,"Okay, I'll try you out on these five. If you sell, you know, we'll we'll give you a chance in the gallery. So, and I sold in the first week, three of my paintings. So that was I was super grateful. It was a great relationship, and yeah. So that was kind of the start of of getting myself into some galleries.

Laura Arango Baier: 5:53

Now the part that nobody puts in the artist

statement: 5:55

rejection. It happens to everyone repeatedly, and it doesn't fully stop even once you've had some success. Paul Batch with a genuinely painful early story, Philippe Gandial with a surprisingly honest admission about the insecurity that never quite goes away, and Russell Gordon on finding a gallery that actually fits your work and taking no gracefully when it comes.

Paul Batch: 6:16

I I'll throw a couple things out there. So early on, like one of the, I'll bring up some of my more painful moments. I was at the local art gallery. It's in West Hartford, in Connecticut, and I had been there for a couple years teaching and doing stuff or whatever. But anyways, so they're having one of these nights. It's a fundraiser night, and they're like, "Hey, Paul, you want to go paint outside? And then we'll raffle off your painting at the end. I'm like, yeah, sure, that sounds fun. You know, I would do anything for them at that point. You know, I was like, absolutely. So I go out there. My wife comes. We weren't married yet. I don't think we were married. I don't know. We might be married. No kids yet though. So I'm out there and I'm painting. And then you know a couple people come by and you know painting's done. Pop it in the frame. You got to go stand up. You got to auction it off, right? I know maybe like 30 people in the audience. Nobody, nobody wants to bid shit on my painting. So I they got me standing up there next to the thing I worked on, and like the price drops, like, and I'm still standing there, and nobody wants to pay, and I'm just got that stupid look on my face, like fucking kill me now, you know. I am done. Just let me go die off in the corner somewhere. This is the most horrible thing in my life. Nobody wants to pay like 200 bucks for this thing. Like seriously, like the cost of the frame. No, nobody. It's not even worth it at that point, you know. So I mean, I did I did all kinds of stuff like that early on, just trying to put myself out there, you know, just because you got to go out there and people got to tell you no, and you got to take it, and you got to say, I don't care, I'm going to get better tomorrow. Frick this. My the gallery I work with now the most is probably at is is Addison Art Gallery at the Cape. Helen, if you're watching, hello. I love telling this one too because it took this is this is nine in sign language. We don't do three. This is nine. So it took me nine years of emails to this woman before she would talk to me. So every year while I'm at home with the baby and trying to like, hey, I can do a David Cassin, sure. While I'm in that headset, I'm like, I was getting American art collector in some of these magazines and stuff, and I saw a painting by Paul Schulenberg that I liked, and it was a like a bathrobe hanging off a door, you know, no big deal, right? But the lights hitting it nice. I like the way it's painted, and I'm reading the article, and he seems nice. And I notice the gallery, and then the woman working at the gallery, Helen. She owns the gallery. It's her gallery. And then I see them again in the same magazine, you know, and I'm like, and I start to put it together, like wow, she's really working for this dude. Like, I need, I need a Helen. I need this woman, you know. So I, I ended up having a list of about 2025, galleries that I would email every like six months or so, and I would just send out all my paintings or whatever, all my, you know, portfolio images, send them out. No, nobody, nobody responds to those things. You know, what what would be nice would be like, hey, not bad. Try back next year, you know. Those kinds of things. I was like, oh, somebody said something, you know. But yeah, no. After nine years,

Philippe Gandiol: 9:36

to be honest with you, I have a really hard time because I. I feel that I do feel that I'm insecure about my work too. I have lots of insecurity, and when you approach gallery, you get rejected a lot. They say, you know, oh well, you come. And then at first, they sell. They start selling your painting. Then they say, "Why don't you do more entryways or whatever, you know, or more? I want your painting to be happier, you know, and so forth. So once again, you know, it's like a fine line, and sometimes you just, I just give up. You just give up. So I'm not really, and I'm scared to go to gallery. I'm like, I'm just totally scared. So I go in there. Okay, here's my website, Faso website, of course, the best, and and which is I've been with Crab, I've been with Faso for a long time, and but anyway, and then eventually, you know, they like, but then suddenly they stop selling, and you have to keep the relationship with them, and I'm not very good at that, and my advice to people is: I say, please be consistent.

Sandra Duran Wilson: 11:04

Yeah.

Philippe Gandiol: 11:05

Keep, you know, keep nurturing the relationship. If they see you often, or you talk to them, or you do visual Zoom session or whatever, which is really a good way because you can show the work and you can talk to them and so forth. That's really, really important. I need to do more of that. And COVID was really bad because lots. I was in four galleries. Now I'm only in two galleries because I mean I was kind of two and a half, three three galleries just stop all the only. they reduce their staff and everything. So now they only have like you know 10 artists instead of 20, and I was not part of the 10. And they say ciao ciao, and you have to.

Russell Gordon: 11:59

There there are some great galleries out there, and especially like I work in in a certain style, a classical style. So the galleries that I am lucky enough to be represented by, that's kind of their their main thing. You know, they they have artists that work in that style. There's so many. Another, I think it's hard for a gallery to market. You know, an abstract expressionist next to, you know, it's a tight hyperrealist or a photorealist. Two things are a little like what maybe they can. So I would say, if that's what you want to do, and that is the traditional route, find galleries that suit your work. You see other artists who fit in that family, that sort of theme or style of art. Don't. It seems like now also you have a lot more. Like I said in my dark days, you had to send out physical packages in the mail of slides, and the only way that you could really become aware of a gallery was maybe to visit the city that you'd heard the gallery was in to go visit the gallery personally, which is always great. Or in magazines, galleries advertised in magazines. So with the internet, I mean, I think you know, new artists, young artists just have so much better access to see the galleries and see what they're doing. If if if it's not working out, or if the gallery says no, don't don't despair. They're they're saving you a ton of of trouble. It's not meant to be, or at least not right now. And maybe if they give you constructive criticism by saying, you know, this this is not where we're going right now, or we only show paintings with these three colors, and you don't use other colors, whatever their arbitrary reasons are, take it, let it go, and consider yourself fairly traded because it's the only thing worse than probably worse than not finding representation in that system is finding it and then having it you know squandered or put away in you know storage areas, which I have definitely had that experience? I think most artists have had that experience, and then no one's seeing it, and that's no good. I mean, you you you don't want that. So if they say thanks but no thanks, say thank you for considering it. I appreciate your time, and you can say, do you recommend a gallery that you think might might be a better fit for me, and sometimes they do. Sometimes they're very happy to do that. I think most galleries are actually run by people with a vision for their space, and you know they have to stay faithful to that. It's a business after all, so they're generally pretty pretty good there. Pretty helpful. It can be intimidating, I think, but don't be. You know, you're an artist for your own reasons, and you believe in yourself enough to sit down at the easel every day and paint. So your work is good, and have faith in that. You'll find the right gallery or exhibition space when the time and the place is right. So don't give up.

Laura Arango Baier: 15:25

So what are galleries actually looking for when they say no? Sarah Yeoman on how the submission process itself has changed, and Shuang Li on the one word that comes up

more than any other: 15:34

consistency.

Sarah Yeoman: 15:37

Well, you'd have to go onto their website. Most galleries nowadays have a form you have to submit that they ask you to not just walk in with a portfolio. They want you to submit your work that way, or they, or twice a year they'll have a call where they'll have you know they'll ask people to send in work, and I get rejected. I've been rejected over and over and over again from galleries I'd love to be in, but that's okay because because then you know a week later somebody calls you and says we'd love to have your work in our gallery. So again, you can't give up on it. And galleries are really wonderful, but with what's happened with social media and you know Faso websites, I do a lot of sales directly through my Faso website, which I probably had for 1210, or 12 years now. I I started way back when, and so I think now we have a much. It's much easier for people to connect with the artist directly. They don't have to find you through a gallery. If someone is interested, if they love crows and and ravens, they can go in and Google and say watercolor paintings of corvids, crows and ravens, and my name's going to come up just because I've been out there for quite a long time. So, galleries are wonderful. I have really good relationships with galleries, but you can also, as an artist, use social media to get your work out there and to be seen.

Shuang Li: 17:06

I think you know. Here is thing: any galleries, you know, if you go through certain society to go to the national shows and etc. you have to be at the society's bar at least, then you can go into to the galleries. Then afterwards, the galleries are very selective. The galleries usually they would say they wanted to see you are consistent. You have a body of work at the same level most of the time, yeah. Sometimes we paint. We all paint bad paintings, but the galleries wanted to see you are consistent. So you, they don't want to see your piece. Okay, this month you gave them a one piece and looks fantastic, and next month and then you, you know, pull in three pieces and none of those are good. So they don't want that, and they don't know how to promote you for that. Also, these days the galleries hardly promote any one single artist, so you are competing with the other artists on the same wall. They, the gallery owners, want all the pieces in his or her gallery looks at the same level. That's why you know some people say,"Oh, it's hard to get in when they don't want me. Yeah, because they have so many artists to select, and they wanted a certain professional look in their gallery. They don't want people think they their you know very expensive locations are selling like a garage sale pieces. So they wanted to keep their reputation as well, and then that's how I understand you know they select your pieces. So I actually didn't get into certain galleries until quite late, you know, and that's another thing you wanted to be patient with, you know, with yourself. If you keep going into the national level shows, that means that you are probably ready. But before that, the locals sometimes they sell, you know, the small pieces for the tourists and such, yeah, that's workable. But the key for me, at least, is keep working at yourself and make yourself, you know, to the certain bar. Then that it's a time, you know, you can consider to to select get, you know any galleries that's nearby or at your preference at certain locations.

Laura Arango Baier: 19:48

So, what does a good gallery actually do for you that's worth the commission you're handing over? S. C. Mummert, Stacy Peterson, and Sandra Duran Wilson on the value a real gallery relationship provides.

SC Mummert: 20:00

Well, I have to say this too because it's it's it's fair and valid. Hats off to my galleries, because a lot of that heavy lifting is handled by the galleries. And if I didn't have the galleries that were prepared to go ahead and work with me in that manner, I don't think I'd be experiencing what I am, you know. And I, I actually have, and this is also amazing to me. But I have galleries calling me, wanting to carry my work, you know, and I'm grateful for that. But again, it comes down to, you know, what are they prepared to do? It gets back to this work thing that we started talking about early on, you know how much work are they prepared to do, or is it just come in and hang the thing on a nail in the or whatever in the in the gallery? Okay, I've done my stuff. Oh no, okay, I'm not sure that's the best model, you know. And so I have some. I'll just say very hardworking galleries that are prepared to go ahead and work with me, and it's the good news for them. This is this is remarkable because a gallery really there's more to it than this, but I'll try and oversimplify and say all they have are the walls. I mean, if you really look at it, they're just like you know, grocery store has shelves, you know, end caps and whatever. Galleries have walls. Dealers, car dealerships have asphalt to park their cars on. You know, and so everybody's got you know their resources to go ahead and depict their product and try and market it.

Stacey Peterson: 21:33

I would say there's there's three things that I've really focused on. The first that has been pretty much my everything and my constant since I started is that I have amazing galleries selling my work, and there's always like a lot of talk. Like my friends are always surprised when I tell them what a gallery commission is, but I when I say it's worth every penny, I like mean it with 100% of my heart because I am not a salesperson. Like I am super introverted. I almost am like apologetic when I'm trying to sell my work. Like I don't know. My husband makes fun of me. I just like I am not. If you start talking to me about a painting, I'm not going to talk you into buying it. It's just is not something that I'm good at. I could probably work at it more, but my galleries have been amazing, and I have a few that I have some really long-term relationships with, and a few that are newer to me in the past few years. But they've all been amazing, and so I make I would say 99.9% of my income through gallery sales. I don't sell through my studio. I don't like to do it. Usually, if somebody contacts me through my website, I'm saying, "Where'd you see my work? Did you see it at such and such a gallery? And then I'm gonna pawn them off on that gallery to deal with the sale because that's just it's it's not my thing, and I really value my galleries.

Sandra Duran Wilson: 22:54

Biggest way was like I said, I did outdoor art shows every weekend, six months out of the year, I'd be up at three or 4o'clock in the morning, and all kinds of weather-hell of a way to make a living. But I did it for quite a few years, and I met a lot of different people. I also had my work in galleries. I would submit to some exhibitions, juried exhibitions, to get my work in, and I just in in teaching, writing, and teaching opened up to a lot more people. So a lot of my students became collectors, or collectors became students, which I really loved. I had some really big collectors, and and one of the women she started to take a course with me, and now she's doing beautiful work of her own. So it's relationship is what how you build a collector base, whether that relationship is online, whether it's in person, whether it's with your galleryist, usually a gallery will not share collector information because that's their business. But if you have a good relationship with your galleryist, they open up opportunities for me for you to, you know, have exhibitions to meet and greet. One gallery I was in would let me come in and paint, you know, and so I'd be in this in the gallery painting, and I would meet a lot of people, and they see what you're doing, and they're like, "Ooh, I love that, and they buy stuff. So,

Laura Arango Baier: 24:38

a couple of specific tactical things now from artists who've clearly thought this through. Michael Orwick on why he deliberately spreads his galleries across different regions, and Christine Code on the one rule she never breaks when a commission comes in through a gallery.

Michael Orwick: 24:51

Touristy areas and touristy areas have hot times right during the year, so if you diversify where your galleries are. Then you can kind of go. Okay, now it's this season over here. Now it's this season over here. It also allows my ADHD brain to go. Now I'm painting California. Now I'm painting, you know, Oregon. Now I'm painting, you know, wherever. And so it's fun for me to kind of bounce around and just go. Okay, I'm preparing for this season in this gallery, so that was a part that was kind of early on, kind of like I'm like, oh, I discovered the secret, you know, to how to make galleries work. Because some of them don't sell for like five or six months at a time because it's just so quiet. Then I do sell prints, which has never been a good part of my marketing, but it's nice. Again, it's just I don't think art should be for only the super rich. God bless them for buying my big work and working with me, so I can do great big works. But at the same time, I think that anybody that appreciates art should be able to have art, and so that I also teach one class every week. As you can tell, I'm a bit of a talker, which you know, when you're working by yourself in the studio, you get a little lonely. So it gives me that chance not only just to hear my own voice, but to hang out with people that have the same or similar interests, you know, and just talk about art. It's amazing that people will want to spend three to four hours a week with me and just talk about my favorite things, you know. And so that's really nice. So I say that I teach because I need to; otherwise, it explode. I need to be with people. Yeah, I'm a social person and an unsocial job, antisocial job. So that's the main things. I I'm trying to work with more designers and work do more hotel projects and like large scale things. I really do like painting big, but it's they pile up pretty quickly here in the studio if you have a bunch of six foot seven foot paintings, and you don't have a market for it. So I do like, and I'm working more towards finding some of that. Yeah, I do a lot of commissions, which again I enjoy. I turn down way more commissions than I take. It has to be something that I would want to paint. I'm to that point, luckily, in my career where it's I don't just paint everything and do anything for money anymore. So, but mostly I think maybe just because of how I set up my website or whatever, people self-edit a lot of times before they get to me. Like, oh, he doesn't want to paint my grandma. He doesn't want to paint my dog. You know, I want to paint your land, the landscapes that you know are of special interest to you.

Christine Code: 27:43

I would say, like I said, I've always taken commission work, and commissions kind of drag you down, especially if the client is really prescriptive about what they want. And of course, now that I'm showing in all of these galleries and selling, you know, the work that does come from my heart. I can be a little bit more picky and choosy on the commissions I accept. But recently, I just commissions just are pressure, no matter what. I've recently devised a system that helps alleviate some of that pressure. So let's say a client asks me for you know they say oh I love your sunsets with the peachy tones, but I need a 40 by 40. I will say, okay, I'm going to paint you two or 340 by 40s with the peachy tones for you to choose from, and that has been really great for all of us. It takes the pressure off me to get it right in that one shot. It takes the pressure off the client to be stuck with one, the one and only painting you do for them. It you know they have choices now. I mean, what's better than that? And also, whatever gallery this commission is through, I'm getting them all three paintings, and the client picks one, and the gallery has more stock. It can hang the other two on the wall and sell them, so it's a win-win for everybody. And you know what? Once in a while, the client will say, "Well, you know what? I have room for two, so they actually take two. So, you know, that's just a bonus. So that's how I've been how I've been dealing with commissions lately, and it's it's been working out really well. It really takes the pressure off off everybody because the more parameters a client puts around a painting, the less free I am able to make those choices. And sometimes it just ends up in a jumbled mess because their vision doesn't match my vision, and I can't take the painting to where you know I want to put out my best work. So if I offer three options, that way I can make my three best paintings with the peachy sunset colors, and and they have the choice. And oh, and and yes. So if you are showing in a gallery, just a piece of advice, and you get a random. And somebody asks for a commission. Always ask that collector if they found your work in in a gallery, or did they just find you through a random internet search? How they found you? Because if they saw your work in the gallery first, you should run that commission through the gallery. It's just good business. It establishes trust with your gallery, and it just builds that good business relationship with your gallery, so you should always honor that. But yeah, anyway, so that's that was sort of an aha moment. That's how I deal with the pressure of commissions now. You know, it takes a little bit longer, but the galleries are always wanting work, so it it kind of kills two birds with one stone, and it's it's been great that way.

Laura Arango Baier: 30:43

Every gallery relationship runs on trust, and trust runs on consistency. Matt Smith on not undercutting the people selling your work. Eric Kopel on staying transparent even when it's uncomfortable, and Keith Bond on the one thing he learned working behind the scenes at a gallery himself.

Matt Smith: 30:59

All of the above, and just to be clear, I do direct sales too, and I don't see that as undercutting the gallery. What would be undercutting the gallery is if the painting was in the gallery and you sold that out from under them. That I don't do. I might pull a painting that's been in a gallery a while and send it to another dealer, which I've done before, but that's a different deal. But if I post an image on Facebook and somebody contacts me, is that available? And it just came out of the field yesterday, then it's it's fair game. Again, middle or social media, like I say, with eliminating the middleman has also exposed all collectors to all galleries, all artists, and everything. So it's it used to be a collector would go to one or two specific galleries, and it was kind of like their client. So you'd respect that. Now you don't know who saw your work where, or what's going on with that. So it's really blurred the lines and created some degree of confusion. Just pay respect to your galleries if you're working with them and understand that, and and they'll understand as well that that you're going to be selling too, and and so do the other galleries. I had a gallery tell me something. One of my gallery owners tell me something very interesting about 10 years ago. He said, "Matt, we don't we don't so much fight for the clients anymore. We fight for the artists because the the clients are going to go wherever they have to go to get the artists they want, and that was the first time I ever heard that. I thought that was very interesting. So there's that aspect of

Erik Koeppel: 32:37

it too. I have benefited from all those things that that you've said, you know. So in you know in the age of social media, in the age of websites, like I think it's really important. It has been really important for me to like keep a degree of openness in terms of my ability to work directly with clients, you know. So that's something that I look for in a gallery. But you also, you you have to be able to do that in a context where you're honest with the gallery. Not that you know. Well, what I would just say Is is you know when something you're doing is wrong, and you know when something when you're doing is right, and then you know when there's a sort of vague gray area in the middle. And like what I've sort of tried to do is what I'll think to myself like well if I feel like I'm in this gray area where I'm not quite sure I should probably talk to the people involved rather than just like you know people end up in situations where you know you don't want to end up in a situation where you have to keep secrets in order to keep good relationships or something like that, and like I've sort of worked with the the general idea that like the art world is kind of small, and that like the things that you do will come to light, you know, and and so you should be able to have a clean conscience about like, well, even if I've done something that was within our agreement, and that you know maybe somebody else wasn't happy about. They can at least remember that conversation that we had, where I told them what I was doing, and that we had agreed to it. You know, so it's like it's not telling everybody what they like to hear all the time, but it's being honest and trying to keep a good good standard of relationships with people.

Keith Bond: I will clarify: 34:48

when I worked at the gallery, I I was more as the assistant director. I was more behind the scenes duties and responsibilities. I didn't work directly with the. Clients as much, I did some, but not to the same extent as you know you would expect working in a gallery. So I didn't necessarily learn as the gallery in the gallery setting. I didn't necessarily always learn what to do to market my art as an artist, but what I did observe from those who did the selling at the gallery is how important those personal relationships are with the client, and that is number one. That is key: is to build that relationship with the clients,

Laura Arango Baier: 35:44

but trust runs both ways. Matt Smith again on where he draws a line when a gallery starts to overstep.

Matt Smith: 35:51

Yeah, that's where I get sideways with galleries if they start trying to tell you that you owe them. Like I used to do a show in California, and there was a gallery up, a group show with a bunch of artists, and there was a gallery that represented several. And they wanted a commission of paintings sold at that show, even though the show was already taking a commission. She said, "This you're my artist. This is my region, and I thought that's insane. That's where you're overstepping the lines, and that can be you know a person that's difficult to work with. You you can't do that. I had somebody ask about a painting that was on my website the other day that that was in a gallery, and I sent them to the gallery. I wasn't going to take it back from the gallery to make a full sale. So and I was happy my gallery got to to make some money too. So everybody everybody came out fine, and and and I look better in my gallery's eyes because you know I sent a client to them. And as far as the the following on social media, these these galleries are trying to make a living too. So sure, they want they want artists that are going to bring people in and expose and hopefully expose all those clients to the rest of the artists in their gallery. Maximize sales. It's just smart business.

Sandra Duran Wilson: 37:07

One

Matt Smith: 37:07

of the things my dad told me a long time ago is, Matt, in in business, everything is negotiable, and I always remember that. So just remember that. There's no one set way. I've had galleries call me on the phone and say, Matt, we love your work. We'd love to show you work. This is our commission rate, and I said, "Well, this is that won't work for me. This is what I work on. Well, we can't do that because we're on the same rate with every art. Well, I know for a fact they aren't, and I know if Howard Turpney or Richard Schmidt came into the gallery and said 25% commission, who's going to say no to that of Howard Terpney million-dollar painting. Boy, I'm only going to get 250,000 instead of 400,000 because I had to stick to the 6040 commission or 5050 or whatever it is. Everything's negotiable.

Laura Arango Baier: 37:53

And finally, you don't have to give up your whole self to a gallery relationship, and you don't have to stay in one forever either. Robert Johnson on asking for the freedom to paint something unexpected, Michelle Dunaway on juggling several galleries at once without burning any bridges, and Kim Laura closing us out on respecting the people who represent you and knowing when it's time to have a different conversation.

Robert Johnson: 38:15

I love to paint a lot of different subjects. I think the thing that people that are listening and watching just paint what you really love to do. You know, don't feel compelled to pursue things that are not inspiring to you. And I'll just mention one little episode in my art experience, I was in a gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I had had a wonderful, successful show. I'm happy to say, and not being boastful, just just it was. They did a good job in marketing the art, and I had like 23 still lifes in it. What they wanted, and I had they were all recent work that I just created, and it worked. It was good for the gallery, good, good for me, and but I was kind of worn out with still lifes, and when I was a little boy, everybody in our family had a job. My job was taking care of chickens, and so I grew up with them, and I know what they look like, and I I can draw them from memory. And I call the gallery director there, and I said, "Would you would you like a chicken painting? And I remember this just like it was yesterday. Today, Laura, he said, "Send it if you must.

Laura Arango Baier: 40:07

Oh no!

Robert Johnson: 40:09

So I sent it to him, and it it sold very quickly. I don't think they realize that people do like things like that.

Michelle Dunaway: 40:19

I think it's I think it's pretty much an equal blend, you know, because I mean, one of the things with being a fine artist, you do have to get used to like there's an ebb and flow, and it is good to be in several different galleries. I mean, nowadays people sell their work directly on the internet, and that's something you can do as well too. I I don't do that except for commissions, only because I established with galleries, and they work really hard for me, and so I want to honor that relationship. But I know artists that are starting out now that aren't in regular galleries, and they sell work directly, and I think that's fine. You know, it's we just want to always honor the relationships we've established. You know, and you know, for for myself back then, it really did start with galleries, and it was you know important to have galleries that have different peak times throughout the year for their tourism for people to see. It's not as much as a concern now because online, like people will still buy online through the gallery even if it's not a time that they would actually go visit the gallery in person. I think online sales are so so big now, you know, but so I have several several galleries that I supply work through, and and just because I've been in galleries a long time and have a regular collector base, and you know they always bring in new collectors, and that's really nice. And of course, any magazine article you know, that comes up will will then and the you know there's the physical magazine. I'm glad they still exist because I still like to flip through like a physical magazine, and but then they have the online version too, and so people see your work through that and then can contact the galleries. But also, you know, there is a huge promotion through social media, you know, you post a painting, and often what happens is I'll post a painting that I'm doing for a show for a gallery, and someone will see it through my post, and then contact the gallery and purchase the painting, you know. Or a collector comes to the gallery, sees one work, and then they go to your Instagram, and then they are familiar with more work, and then they might commission you to do something too, you know. So it's just it all intertwines and works together.

Kim Lordier: 42:24

That has been that has been the easy part. I think a difficult part for me has been, you know, when I travel outside my state and am so inspired by the landscape and the environment and the people, and I'm blessed to be in a few galleries outside my state, in Montana at Illum Gallery, and in Colorado at Wild Horse, and you know, trying to stay true to their vision and and you know, keeping my best work, you know, for them. They all want your best work, and it's, you know, we don't always have we don't always have our very best work available because we're still working so hard to to get to that point. I guess, but I think that I think the takeaway is respecting your galleries and respecting the the folks that run them because they have their own vision, and if you're if you're not willing to compromise, I don't happen to be in a position where I could just dictate what it is that I want to paint, and you know, if if you're in in that position, you know, with somebody representing you. Oh, and my Hugh Skelly Gallery too, down in Balboa Island, and you know, they all have their own vision. So if you don't resonate with what they're wanting, then it's time to be professional and excuse yourself, or have that conversation with, you know, are you are you willing to carry some something else that I'm? Are you willing to try something new with my work, you know, have the conversation, and being open and professional with them is really important.

Laura Arango Baier: 44:29

That's the gallery episode. If you're just starting to build these relationships yourself, the

short version is this: 44:34

show up professionally, expect some no's, and remember, it's a two-way street. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.