A 'new' perspective on art galleries...

I’m a week into my show at the time that I type this and I have to say this past week has been absolutely amazing. I’ve spend most of my time at the gallery talking to people who come in to enjoy my work. It is so nice to see peoples reactions to your work and hear their opinions and ideas about it. It has been a very inspiring experience and a huge ego boost. I would encourage every artist out there to do this at least once because it will give you an insight in how your art is being perceived by others and it will give you a lot of energy and inspiration at the same time.

Doing this show and being here every day has also given me a whole new perspective on all those art galleries out there. Now I know this might be a sensitive subject for some and I do not intend to hurt anyone’s feelings I would just like to share how this experience has influenced my personal views. 

A lot of artists out there, especially in the online communities, complain about the high commission rates of galleries and I agree to an extent. Especially since it’s already very hard to sell and make some money off your art, and as a starting artists even more so. Having to pay a commission that can go all the way up to 85% can feel very unfair, especially because, as the artist you do all the work right? Well that’s the point where my view has changed over the past few months. 

As I’ve stated before, organizing a solo is a lot of work and there’s a financial investment as well. When you are represented by a gallery they will do all of this for you. Now I can hear you say that that alone is not worth up to 85% commission and I agree. The time spent at the gallery however is a completely different story. 

However much I might like spending time here at the moment and talking about my work to all the people that come in. I will be very happy when I can return to my studio and work on my art instead. that’s where I want to spend my time, that’s what makes me happy. We need our time in the studio to create, we simply can’t afford to spend most of our time promoting ourselves and talking to clients, there wouldn’t be much to talk about if we did that. So we need all those people out there who work at these art galleries and who are willing to spend their days talking to people about our work for us. That’s where they deserve the commission they ask. 

Now there might be galleries out there that for one reason or another are not as deserving as others, but in general I think as artists we need to think about the time that is spent promoting us as well. You should always talk about the commission that is being asked, try to find out why the commission is as high as it is and what kind of services the gallery will offer you in return, there might even be room for negotiation. But try to be reasonable, promoting artwork is a very time consuming business and as we all know, time is money. Let’s all give each other a break and try to understand where everyone is coming from.  Can’t we all just get along?