Last month I went to a show at a local gallery that an artist I barely know invited me to. I had been sick the week of the opening and completely forgot about it in spite of the fact that I had it written all over the place on my calendar. When I realized the day after the opening that I had missed it, I felt terrible and called the gallery a couple of days later to see when they were open so I could at least pop in to see the work. Turns out they weren't going to be open that week, but the owner offered to open especially for me if I would like. While this is a very nice gesture on the man's part, it puts the person accepting such an offer in an awkward position. If you are the sole client that a gallery has opened for, and you don't have any sort of established relationship with that gallery, and you don't buy anything after the owner has extended this courtesy to you, then things can often be very tense, so naturally I declined. I told him that I didn't want to be such an imposition and that I would stop by the following week, but thank you anyways.
Apparently I wasn't the only person who had contacted the gallery, as I received a call later that same day from the owner who said that he'd be opening for a few hours after all as he had gotten more than a dozen calls from potential customers. So I went. When I got there, he had a few people milling about and I struck up a conversation with him about the artist who had invited me to the opening and how I had missed it and the pieces that I liked the most in the show. We talked for more than an hour and naturally when it came out that I'm an artist, he asked me to send him some photos of my work.
Now this is something that I have done many, many times in my life and it's never been that big a deal. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing easy about presenting your work to a curator or a gallery owner, far from it. No one wants to hear that their work isn't interesting, isn't what the gallery is looking for, or worst of all, that it just plain isn't any good, but this is a part of being an artist. And as your art is really a reflection of you, your feelings, and carries a little piece of your soul in each work, to be told, "thanks, but no thanks and this is why..." can be a very difficult thing to endure. But I have never left a gallery after a casual chat with someone who may or may not be interested in my work and break down and cry when I got home. Perhaps it was the stress of the holidays getting to me (as this was just after Christmas) or perhaps it was me taking stock of what I have and that I feel confident enough with to show this man, I don't know, but I know that I dipped into a very dark place that evening and although I came out of it and went right back to work on the piece I was working on, it was still quite shocking to have been so sad about being asked to submit some work to him.
Here I am nearly a month later and I still haven't sent anything. I have shot some new photos of some existing encaustic pieces that he wanted to see and have begun the task of cataloging them for him to view them with their full information, but I'm not hustling to get them to him. One moment I am strong and telling Griffin that I don't care if the man likes them or not, I am who I am and I create what I create and if he doesn't like them, then that's okay I'll survive and regardless of whether he likes my work or not then I'll know for sure one way or the other if this man would be interested in showing me. But then, I get all flustered and think that I can't handle the rejection or the criticism that's sure to be handed out, however kindly, and that I simply can't do this because it's safer to not make a move at all. I don't quite know what's going on with me, but I hope it's a phase that I will pass through soon and find my courage once again to be the artist I know I can be.
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