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I had just finished helping a customer choose custom frames for her newly purchased paintings when a lady walked into my gallery.
She was an artist.
I could tell by the way she intensely studied our paintings and, more obviously, by the portfolio she carried in her hand. I groaned inside. I knew what was coming. She wanted to show us her artwork.
"Who would I talk to about showing the owner my art?" she asked.
I wondered how to answer. Sometimes the answer depended upon how busy we were, who was available, or if we were installing a new exhibit or not. It was easier for us if people would leave or send their portfolios for us to review at our regular monthly meeting. But deep down, I knew I was stalling. If her work wasn't right for our gallery, or not competent enough to hang with our other artists, I'd have to disappoint her. And based on historical averages, I'd be disappointing her.
Quit stalling and man up I thought to myself. After all, I am the gallery director. Better to just get this over with right now.
"You can talk to me." I replied, "I'm the gallery director and one of the owners."
"Great" she responded and handed me her portfolio.
She was already telling me her name, how long she'd been painting, that all her friends and family said she should be a professional artist, but I was only half listening. I had heard the same story hundreds of times.
I opened her portfolio hoping to find the next undiscovered virtuoso. I opened it to the first artwork and my heart sank. Her work was good. But in the gallery business good isn't good enough. She was competent, but hadn't yet developed much of a unique style. Her work was still quite literal, and while she could fairly accurately render a landscape or a person, they were simple depictions. Nothing that really stood out as unique. Some areas weren't quite up to professional standards.
I already knew from experience that her art wouldn't sell in our gallery and, even if we wanted to try, we didn't have the space to gamble. If I had more courage back then, I probably would have shared all of this with her. While it might have hurt, it could have, if she was open, perhaps pointed her in a direction to take her art career further. But I was a younger and weaker man back then and, frankly, sometimes I was just tired of how many times I'd had to reject artists.
You never knew when someone would be offended or react badly to well-meaning feedback so it was easier to just say, "I'm sorry, your work is nice, but we really aren't accepting new artists and don't have the space at the moment to consider new work." Or some BS along those lines.
Her face fell, but she girded herself and said, "I understand."
I felt like a jerk. Nothing I had said was untrue, but I don't like to hurt people. Art is supposed to be about inspiration. That's why I worked in the art world - to be inspired and hopefully to inspire others. But I'd been through this so many times, and it had to be done. It was part of the gallery business.
After she left, I walked back to my office. There, in the corner, was a stack about three feet high of art portfolios that artists had mailed us according to the instructions on our website.
Officially, we didn't look at walk-in portfolios. I had broken our own rules by stopping to look at her portfolio. But I had to give her credit for courage. She took a chance and walked in and, in a sense, it paid off in that I did stop and reviewed her portfolio on the spot. At least she had her answer unlike the artists who were still waiting for us to review their portfolio.
Some of the portfolios in the stack had been there for months. We didn't intend to take so long in our reviews. And we did actually review portfolios at least once a month. I, along with the other two owners, would set up a slide projector and, for an hour or two, review portfolios that artists had submitted. We rejected the vast majority. And new portfolios arrived faster than we could review them. There were so many artists in the world, and such little wall space in our gallery. So we had to be extremely careful who we accepted. That was the reality and the economics of how an art gallery works.
In short, my business partners and I were gatekeepers. We stood at the gate, and we rejected nearly everyone.
Occasionally we would find someone that we perceived as a diamond in the rough, and we'd "bless" them and accept them into the gallery.
I really never wanted to be a gatekeeper. I didn't take any pleasure in turning people away or in putting up a roadblock in front of their dreams. It seemed unfair to me that so many artists were just out of luck if they couldn't get past the "gallerist at the gate."
But if they weren't part of the gallery system, what were their options? There really weren't any.
Perhaps they could show their art at various art fairs, or they could take out advertising in art magazines. But both options were extremely time consuming and expensive, especially for an individual artist. There really weren't many good options for artists other than art galleries.
But then, about halfway through my time as a gallery owner, something changed: the Internet.
The Internet started going mainstream in the late 90s. The world wide web had been invented and Netscape had created the first free consumer web browser. Even then I sensed this was the beginning of something big and rushed to be one of the first art galleries online.
By 1997, I, with my background in computers, had created a fully ecommerce capable website for our gallery. I sold a $30,000 painting off our website in 1998. Don't ever try to tell me people won't buy art online, I was selling art online over a quarter of a century ago.
And I knew instantly that the Internet changed everything. More importantly, I realized that the Internet spelled the beginning of the end for gatekeepers. And since, as I mentioned above, I never wanted to be a gatekeeper, my mind started generating ideas and plans for a new business, an online business.
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