How to Break Through the Gallery Wall?

Response to comments on: 'A Thousand Crappy Drawings'

Amelia Currier assemblage

Response to comments on: A Thousand Crappy Drawings

Question from Amelia Currier - ameliacurrier.com

“I am a professional artist like yourself , same age … for years I have contacted galleries I felt were a good fit for my work, and occasionally had a reference from a fellow artist to contact them . I feel that my work is mature and interesting, I have quite a bit of inventory and have good credentials. After years of this, I have gained representation from one rather unambitious gallery. Any advice as to how to break through the gallery wall?”

---

Hazel Burgess - painting

Hazel Burgess - hazelburgessart.com - substack

added:

“I'm looking forward to your answer as it would be one if mine. I would also ask you if you think age (as in getting on in years!) has a bearing on whether galleries might want to feature your work.”

---

OK, I have looked at these websites and let me just say, great work!

Now onto the nitty gritty… I know art business is a real mystery for all artists and dealers as well. From all of my conversations with dealers over the years I have a pretty good idea what the thinking is from the upper class gallery angle. I have been in about 50 different galleries over the years and the business practices, ethics and strategies have evolved over the last 5 decades that I have been at it in the USA more or less for the better and that evolution continues to this day and will continue indefinitely into the future.

The biggest disrupter in all of that time has been the internet as you might guess. Galleries in general therefore, while competing with each other for online business definitely don’t want to compete with their own artists. So most will not handle artists who are actively offering their work for sale online which the artist is probably offering for way too cheap. So an artist that wants to take the gallery route has to not be offering art for sale online.

This is an extension of the old school policy when art dealers had an exclusive territory of a city or state or region and their artists could not sell work inside of that territory. Now with the internet, local territory doesn’t mean much, it is now about networks. Who is in the dealer’s network and a lot of dealers’ and artists’ networks overlap so that has caused some discomfort.

The next thing is pricing. A lot of artists don’t like it but if you want to go the gallery route your work has to be offered at about 500% more than you want to get out of it in order to take into account, discounting, gallery commission, taxes, business expenses, including supplies, equipment, tools, studio, utilities, crating and shipping, business travel, personal website portfolio, etc., etc. The artist will end up with about 15-20% of actual personal income to live off of from the retail value of the work.

That means that if you have $100,000 in full retail sales value in a year, that after everything is said and done you, the artist, is going to end up with 15K to 20K to live from. Hence you prices need to be high and you need to work at a big scale so the prices are high enough to make a living. If you want to make 100K you will have to sell 500K worth of art a year. Can the artist make and keep up with that much inventory? That is daunting to most artists. If you can, then you will probably need at least 5 galleries in different major cities to make something close to a living.

The gallery is in the same position. They are going to end up with about the same per 100K or less because of the need for deep pockets, high rents, insurance and an internet marketing person, book keeper, multiple employee salaries, sale commissions to their sales people. This is a custom, specialty, luxury business selling experimental, hence unpredictable products to people with lots of disposable income, plus like art and have a short attention span and only so much wall space to fill with the art. It is not bubble gum or boxes of cereal.

At least if you are running a small fancy restaurant, people get hungry every day. So the art business has its limits at all levels. It is amazing there even is an art business when you consider all of that.

Then, there is the part where most galleries want to keep it simple and have a minimal amount of liability while selling the most sellable and expensive type of item that requires the least amount of space, suffers the least amount of wear and tear and what do you get? Medium to large scale paintings on canvas that are expensive enough to make it worth the trouble to sell. Everything now a days needs to be 10K and up. So works on paper that require framing that can get damaged and too cheap to waste time on, 3D works that need a lot of special handling and bulky storage with expected damage liability, etc. A gallery might handle small amounts of these type of items to provide variety but it is not the bread and butter.

As you have probably seen, galleries are usually empty most of the time except at openings or other events. They don’t have cash registers. There are no lines of people waiting to buy something. That means a gallery is only selling a few things a month on a good month to a very fickle and exclusive clientele who are never in a hurry. Then there is type of gallery - really more of a shop - in a dense, heavy walking traffic tourist area where people are mostly looking for mementos that fit in their suitcases or that they can wear, like tee shirts and jewelry.

So if your work is on paper, inexpensive, small, 3D, you really can’t expect to make a living as an artist strictly from sales of art in the gallery system and the gallery can’t afford to sell it even if you are the greatest artist of your generation. Since artists are afraid or unable to sell their works at the prices they need to sell them at, to match the gallery prices, then you can’t make a living like that either on your own strictly from art and print sales.

Frankly this is just the hard facts without any sugar on it. It is not prejudice Hazel, age or otherwise, lack of respect, disinterest in your work. It doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you or your work. It just means that it is a tough capitalist world out there for the artists and for the dealers as well and everybody has to accept the economic reality as laid out above and adjust to it. It is an exclusive, luxury, status-based commodities business like yachts or haute couture fashion at the high end of the market.

There are a lot of upper class galleries around the country serving the professional and business community which I participate in myself but they have to live by the same economic constraints. When I said 10k+ sales as a minimum this is the level of gallery I am thinking about. At the very high end of the market where the minimum expected sale price is probably more like 50K+.

I was talking to one collector in Aspen one time that told me he doesn’t even look at art that doesn’t start at 300K+. Not worth his time or trouble. I thought that was interesting. He is definitely way higher up the food chain than I am.

All of this is to say, that if you can wrap your head around this truth in today’s world then you have to make some adjustments in your thinking and expectations, and most artists can’t or resist it or are against it or just don’t want to deal with it. Then you have to be happy with making your living in another way and be content to enjoy the peace and quiet of your studio and creative life and sell things when sales happen randomly online or in person at whatever prices you feel are fair to you and your clients. That is perfectly OK. In fact, it is great if you are happy and content. What more could you ask?

We are artists, we can shape our own worlds however we want to. We don’t have to participate in the rarified, hoity toity, shark infested waters at the top end of the market place. I don’t think I want to (but I might not turn it down if the opportunity came my way).

We artists live in our own very different world that doesn’t exactly match up with the collectors market world. We have to decide what we believe in, what our personal values are, what kind of economic status we feel comfortable in, how hard we are willing to work. There is a place for everyone in the art world and the folks at the top of the food chain help to create the flash, glitter, prestige and market for all of us to chose where we want to find our home within it. We all have a voice and an influence among ourselves and we all acknowledge and appreciate each others’ work and that is a wonderful thing all by itself.

Young artists are figuring out their own ways to participate in the collector market outside of the traditional gallery market. Still, as laid out above the economic realities and constraints cannot be over looked. We, as a community, cannot underestimate our value which is usually a lot higher that we think.

I believe we undervalue ourselves because we are actually a bottomless source of potential wealth so we discount ourselves. I am sure what I have said is very demoralizing to some. It is not intended to be. It is just the basic reality of the art market and it is best to be open eyed about it. Like they say, it is not personal, it is just business.

If you accept that what I laid out above is basically true then you can decide what you want to do and then not have any uncertainly about your decision and thus be settled, at peace and happy with it.

Luckily for me I am a work maniac. Maybe there is something wrong with me, I don’t know. There is nothing I like better than to work from early morning to late in the night. I’m living the dream as far as I am concerned but I am sure it is not everybody’s dream. What’s your dream? That is what you have to get clear about and then go for it whatever that is and be content in the pursuit and don’t look back.

Damn, I am not sure I answered the question Amelia. Let me continue…
You asked, “…how to break through the gallery wall?”

I guess all of the above was the prelude. But thinking of you specifically I think I am suggesting that you are going to have to make some strategic adjustments. Such as considering making works that fit the above mentioned requisites to be able for galleries to have a hope of being profitable with your work. Understandably you might not be willing to do that but, that would be the path of least resistance.

A Press Release Campaign for One Year

The other option I would suggest is identify a few galleries in cities around the country that you feel would be a good match in terms of medium and price points with their artists and then do a campaign of designing a once a month press release with an image of your work and some sort of event you are participating in or if you have nothing coming up a press release of something you are doing, a new available work or of series of works you are working on and say something interesting and at the bottom somewhere mention that you are seeking representation in their area. You could also make an online exhibition on your website on a splash page just for those galleries and see if any of them check it out.

Before you start, take down any pages where you are directly selling things.

Send a news release every month with your name in the subject line:

FROM YOUR NAME HERE

Open with a photo of your studio or a new artwork

The press release in standard form

Include all of your contact stuff, website Instagram etc.

mention that you are seeking representation in (blah blah City).

---

and that’s it. Do that for a year to about 20 galleries around the country, maybe 4 galleries in 5 target cities.

Do that for a year so that eventually the dealer remembers your name and art and you become familiar on a peripheral level or if they respond to your email.

Later, if you go to that city stop in and visit the gallery and introduce yourself.

See what happens.

Meanwhile keep making a bunch of art, you are going to need it. Figure out how to work big on canvas. 60 x 48 and larger. Put your canvases at 10-50K depending on size. make a series of related works.

Other than that I don’t know what to tell you accept hold the intention strongly in mind that this is your sincere desire and work toward it happening. Step up to the plate and start swinging.

For every gallery that says yes, you will need a dozen works ready to ship to get started.

Well, that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

---

(CORRECTION - I had, at first called the galleries like I am in as serving the upper middle class but then I looked up income levels and realized that upper class starts at $149,000 household income a year. That is way lower than I imagined. I would have thought about 350K would be the bottom of the upper class. But actually 350K household income a year puts you in the top 1% Shocking! So I went back and changed to Upper Class Galleries)